My life is not my own business. — Anthony Hopkins

I’m having a great life. And I’m 73 and they still phone me up and ask me to do a job here and there. — Anthony Hopkins

Keep low expectations and life gets pretty good. — Anthony Hopkins

Guilt is the thief of life. — Anthony Hopkins

No expectations. Ask nothing, expect nothing and accept everything, and life is very well. — Anthony Hopkins

When you’re younger you have so many ideas about yourself; everything is important. It’s not when you look back, nothing is that important. It’s only life. — Anthony Hopkins

I’m more and more convinced that life is a dream. What has happened to me is surely a dream. — Anthony Hopkins

I’m interested in the dream and subconscious mind, the peculiar dream–like quality of our lives, sometime nightmare quality of our lives. — Anthony Hopkins

I like the good life too much, I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons. — Anthony Hopkins

I do admire Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen, but I’m a philistine. I like the good life too much; I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons. — Anthony Hopkins

I’ve been composing music all my life and if I’d been clever enough at school I would like to have gone to music college. — Anthony Hopkins

I was bullied as a boy–lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up. — Anthony Hopkins

It will be the kiss by which all others in your life will be judged… and found wanting. — Anthony Hopkins

People don’t always tell you what they are thinking. They just see to it that you don’t advance in life. — Anthony Hopkins

I’m married. My wife, Stella–a beautiful woman. She’s brought a lot of peace to my life, a lot of wisdom. — Anthony Hopkins

I don’t mind being a commodity. It’s given me a good life. — Anthony Hopkins

My life turned out to be beyond my greatest dreams. — Anthony Hopkins

I’ve felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father’s family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father. — Anthony Hopkins

Danger is the spice of life and you’ve got to take a risk now and then…that’s what makes life worthwhile. — Anthony Hopkins

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then. — Anthony Hopkins

I always liked to take the plunge, you know, I’d jump in at the deep end and hope that I’d find land somehow, or hope I’d float or survive. That’s more or less the way I’ve gone through my life. — Anthony Hopkins

I think a certain amount of stress in life is good. The stress of just working, which takes effort–I think it keeps you going. — Anthony Hopkins

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier. — Anthony Hopkins

Relish everything that’s inside of you, the imperfections, the darkness, the richness and light and everything. And that makes for a full life. — Anthony Hopkins

I’ve been very lucky. I’ve had my problems in the past, I’ve had my troubles, but you move on. I had a great life and I am really thankful for it. — Anthony Hopkins

I don’t know what I believe. — Anthony Hopkins

I don’t believe in nepotism. I don’t much like the idea of parents who interfere. — Anthony Hopkins

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer. — Anthony Hopkins

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished. — Anthony Hopkins

Once you accept the fact that there’s nothing to fear, you drill into the primal oil well. I believe when we do things without fear, we can do anything. As long as you don’t worry about the consequences. — Anthony Hopkins

I play music–I write my own music, but I play music, just background music really, and just let it happen. — Anthony Hopkins

I’m not unfamiliar with music, and I really do write music. I’ve gotten a talent for it. I don’t have the technical skills, but I do plan to learn. — Anthony Hopkins

I’m composing and writing music. — Anthony Hopkins

I have no education, I have no academic background in painting or in music, but I write music and I compose music and I write and I sell paintings, and my rule is, well, they can’t arrest me. — Anthony Hopkins

When you’re young, you’re very insecure. And if I could learn, if I could revisit my own past I could say to myself, don’t think too much, just get on and do it. — Anthony Hopkins

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive. — Anthony Hopkins

It’s very difficult to liberate yourself from what you’ve learned. You know it’s almost impossible because you learn in order to survive. — Anthony Hopkins

I just learn my lines, go on set. Do my preparation, whatever that is. Have a cup of coffee. Say hello to everyone. And be friendly. ‘Action — And Then Do It.

The reward is in the doing of it. — Anthony Hopkins

I don’t know what acting is, but I enjoy it. — Anthony Hopkins

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting. — Anthony Hopkins

I always distrust the word art when it is applied to acting. — Anthony Hopkins

I hate taxing my mind with analysis. I’m not a good analyst. I cannot talk about acting. I hate talking about it. I hate talking about analyzing. — Anthony Hopkins

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear–that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose. — Anthony Hopkins

My weak spot is laziness. I have a lot of weak spots–cookies, croissants; my wife is always lecturing me about this, I tend to put it all down as habit or it’s just acting. — Anthony Hopkins

I’ve always liked to be a meat and potatoes kind of actor who doesn’t believe in any of the highfalutin stuff about acting, so I tend to be a little bit more cynical. — Anthony Hopkins

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery. — Anthony Hopkins

Acting is just a process of relaxation, actually. Knowing the text so well and trusting that the instinct and the subconscious mind, whatever you want to call it, is going to take over. — Anthony Hopkins

Acting is constricted because you have the lines. But I improvise with it and what I learn on the set. I improvise rhythms and just changes. — Anthony Hopkins

It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone. — Anthony Hopkins

I know that some actors and directors like to have intensity on set. I don’t, particularly. Certainly, if they want that, that’s fine, but I can’t work like that. — Anthony Hopkins

I’m not a health freak. I just work out every day. — Anthony Hopkins

It’s such a pleasant surprise when you come on set and you find someone in charge like Ken Branagh or James Ivory. You know that you’re going to do a day’s work and at the end of it, it’s going to be good. — Anthony Hopkins

Acting is about listening and reacting. John Wayne was right: Acting is just reacting. You don’t have to do much–as long as you stay out of the way of others. That’s why it works. — Anthony Hopkins

What I do is just go over and over and over my lines and learn the script so well that I can just be easy and relaxed. That’s the way I always work. — Anthony Hopkins

People ask me how did you choose the part and how did you prepare for this work? I just learned the lines and showed up; I don’t know what else to say because that’s all I know how to do. — Anthony Hopkins

I could stay making nice safe BBC movies for the rest of my life, so I decided to risk it. It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone. — Anthony Hopkins

I know how to be strong. I know how to be ruthless. It’s part of my nature. I wouldn’t be an actor if I wasn’t. — Anthony Hopkins

I’ve always been hopeless at everything when I was a kid. That’s why I became an actor–’cause I couldn’t do anything else. — Anthony Hopkins

You have to be pretty tough to be an actor, and you have to be pretty certain what you want. You can’t waffle through this business. — Anthony Hopkins

Ryan Gosling. He was a good kid, good actor. I like him very much. What was the name of the movie? I’ve forgotten it. Fracture. — Anthony Hopkins

I have no illusions about my position in this world as an actor or anything like that. I’m very realistic. Reality is a very liberating thing. — Anthony Hopkins

I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart–they were wonderful actors. They didn’t act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful. — Anthony Hopkins

I wanted to be a musician but I didn’t have the talent for it, so I decided I wanted to be famous, so I became an actor. — Anthony Hopkins

We’re all different. Some people are musicians, some people are actors, some people are agents and some people are accountants… We’re all different. — Anthony Hopkins

When I was a younger actor, I was very immersed in it, very ‘method’ and all that. Now, I don’t give a hoot. — Anthony Hopkins

I don’t have any [favourite role]. I’m just a working actor. — Anthony Hopkins

Actors I admire? Ed Harris, or course, I think he’s terrific; because I know he always had to fight being what he looked like a lot, but I think he’s a terrific actor. — Anthony Hopkins

The knighthood was a tremendous honour, I don’t dismiss it. But I feel embarrassed by the flowery, theatrical stuff that goes with being an actor. — Anthony Hopkins

I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back–street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we’ve had. — Anthony Hopkins

Oh yes. I’m an actor, so I just learn my lines, and show up and do it. I gave it a little bit of thought. — Anthony Hopkins

For me, time is the greatest mystery of all. The fact is that we’re dreaming all the time. That’s what really gets me. We have a fathomless lake of unconsciousness just beneath our skulls. — Anthony Hopkins

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time. — Anthony Hopkins

I’m a pretty tough guy, you know. I’m a pretty hard man. I’ve got a lot of compassion, but I don’t waste time with people. — Anthony Hopkins

I don’t waste time being soft. I’m not cold, but I don’t like being, wasting my time with–life’s too short. — Anthony Hopkins

When I was a young guy, I knew everything. Now I know very little. I know less and less as the time goes on. — Anthony Hopkins

The magical, supernatural force that is with us every second is time. We can’t even comprehend it. It’s such an illusion, it’s such a strange thing. — Anthony Hopkins

I look in the mirror and I see the lines, but I don’t care. It’s a good time. I don’t know why it’s such a good time, but it’s a good time. — Anthony Hopkins

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script. — Anthony Hopkins

I love the hour in makeup. It gives you time to think and have a cup of coffee. It’s my favorite part of the day. — Anthony Hopkins