Anthony Hopkins is an Oscar-winning actor who has a love for music and art.
Though he originally wanted to major in music, Hopkins graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama as an acting student and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
“I was fairly stupid in school,” the King Lear actor told the Desert Sun in 2017. “My school history was poor and I think that breeds in any child a lot of anger and loneliness. So I said, ‘Screw it. I’ll become an actor and be successful in life.’ But that attitude has stayed with me all my life. I’m happily grateful I’ve survived all these years.”
Hopkins won his first Oscar in 1992 for Best Actor in Silence of the Lambs and has starred in many critically acclaimed films, including Pravda, Amistad and The Two Popes.
Hopkins released Composer in 2012, an album composed of original works performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and had his artwork exhibited at the Desert Art Collection.
“When you’re a certain age and becoming conscious that you’re inadequate at school – which I was – it’s a lonely feeling,” Hopkins told NPR in 2012. “And I look back on it all now as the greatest gift I could have been given, because it was the rocket fuel that sort of drove me to do something with my life … And here I am, composing at the age of 74.”
The Westworld star became the oldest Oscar recipient of the Best Actor award in 2021 at the age of 83 for his performance in The Father, and he doesn’t seem to have plans to retire anytime soon. He also stars as Jimmy in 2024’s Rebel Moon: Part Two.
Keep scrolling to see the actor’s life in photos: