Films/Programs
Tribute to Sir Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins is one of the most versatile, subtle and commanding actors of our time. Mastering the mediums of stage, film and television, in his four decades on screen, Hopkins has won countless awards (among them the Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA, NYFCC and Emmy), and deservedly been nominated for as many again. His illustrious career has provided a series of riveting, astonishingly vivid portrayals in the roles of such diverse characters as Adolf Hitler, Yitzhak Rabin, John Quincy Adams, Richard Nixon, Guy Burgess, St. Paul, Captain Bligh, Picasso, Quasimodo, C. S. Lewis and everybody’s favorite cannibal, Hannibal Lecter. He’s played servants and kings, a homosexual spy and a schizophrenic ventriloquist, a press tycoon and a modest bookseller, authors and artists, doctors and dreamers, psychos and psychiatrists and everything in between, and done it all with a chameleon like gift of mutability and a vastly understated strength—understated because Hopkins bears the casual grace of an artist that knows no fear.
Not content to rest upon his laurels as perhaps the finest actor of his generation, Hopkins extends beyond his horizons by writing, directing and starring in Slipstream, a sly and surreal murder mystery featured in our tribute to this legendary talent at this year’s Festival. If further proof were needed that this is a singular talent with a bold and eccentric vision beyond compare, one need only measure his work in this film against the bravura performance he delivered as the tragically suppressed butler in James Ivory’s Remains of the Day (also featured in our SIFF tribute) to grasp the full and formidable breadth of Hopkins’ great gifts.
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United Kingdom, 1993, 134 min.
Anthony Hopkins gives one of his most restrained, affecting performances in the role of butler James Stevens, who subjugates himself utterly to his position, putting aside his affections for housekeeper Miss Kenton. Reuniting the key creative team behind Howard's End, this remains one of the
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USA, 2007, 110 min.
An inventive, multilayered journey into the mind of an aging screenwriter whose fictional universe begins to invade his real life. This bold and experimental film from famed actor Anthony Hopkins plays with the nature of cinema and pokes a little fun at the movie business in the process.
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