SIR ANTHONY HOPKINS: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (11)

[This is the eleventh in an occasional series describing British artistes who found fame on stage or in the movies]

I confess to having negative feelings towards roistering Welshmen: this prejudice emanates from the evening in the 1960s I was randomly head-butted by a Welsh rugby fan outside a convivial pub in Edinburgh’s Rose Street and I reeled about stunned and bloodied. I guess Wales had lost the game that afternoon at Murrayfield but that hardly excuses mindless violence and I have since not much admired the fan’s compatriots, especially if like Richard Burton they boozed away and squandered their talents or like Stanley Baker, their fame rested on how many bars they have trashed or bottles broken. The Welsh women were not much better either- noisy singer Dorothy Squires caused chaos and havoc all around her – although talented Catherine Zeta-Jones has smouldering good looks, helping her to manage her tempestuous marriage and volatile emotional health. I am certainly prepared to make an exception to my anti-boyo stance in the case of consummate actor Anthony Hopkins.

A young Anthony Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins (1937- ) has no doubt many of the notorious Welsh characteristics bubbling inside, but he controls them very effectively. The son of a baker in Margam, Port Talbot, Hopkins was a slow schoolboy until taken in hand by his parents and sent to a more stretching institution. He blossomed in music and drama at the Royal Welsh College in Cardiff graduating in 1957 and after National Service he attended RADA. A few years in rep until he was spotted by no less than Lawrence Olivier and invited to join the National Theatre in 1965. When Olivier fell ill, Hopkins, as his understudy, won laurels for his playing of Edgar in Strindberg’s The Dance of Death provoking green-eyed Olivier to write that Hopkins “walked away with the part like a cat with a mouse between his teeth”

Hopkins great break was playing the supporting role of gay Prince Richard (later Richard Coeur de Lion) in the 1968 hit film The Lion in Winter with Peter O’Toole as Henry II and Katherine Hepburn as his Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. This gave him a taste for film and TV acting for which he is now globally famous. In the 1970s he shone as Pierre in BBC’s War and Peace and as Lloyd George in Young Winston as well as taking leading roles at the National Theatre. Yet perhaps his most important moment was on 29 December 1975 when, he claims, he woke up in an Arizona hotel room, not knowing how he got there and immediately signed up with Alcoholics Anonymous. He has described himself as “a recovering alcoholic” ever since. Stability returned to his hitherto rather manic life.

Hopkins’ acting range has been astonishing - he has played Hitler, Quasimodo, Picasso and Richard Nixon in his time. Some of his best performances have been in almost art-house roles like Frederick Treves in The Elephant Man (1980) opposite John Hurt’s depiction of Joseph Merrick. He corresponded platonically with Anne Bancroft in 1987’s 84 Charing Cross Road and has an unrequited love affair with Emma Thompson as the repressed butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day (1993). He rocketed to the notice of the mass US audience with his alarming depiction of deranged psychiatrist Dr Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) jeering at Jodie Foster and had a huge hit with the 1998 swashbuckler The Mask of Zorro alongside Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Later triumphs have been his portrayal of New Zealand motor cycle ace Burt Munro in The World’s fastest Indian (2005) and as Odin in superhero saga Thor (2010)

Hopkins scares as Lecter

Hopkins as hero Zorro Senior

                         

Hopkins has a prodigious memory but works with feverish intensity to master his script. He much impressed Steven Spielberg by memorising a long courtroom speech playing John Quincy Adams in Amstad (1997) – Spielberg could not bring himself to call Hopkins “Tony” but addressed him throughout as “Sir Anthony” – Hopkins was knighted in 1993.

Hopkins has lived in Los Angeles since 2007 and is a naturalised US citizen though retaining his British citizenship too. He is notably philanthropic, generously supporting drama schools, projects for prisoners and The National Trust appeal to preserve Snowdonia. He is a devotee of Greenpeace and supports dozens of good causes.

Music has always loomed large in his life since his Cardiff College days and he is an accomplished pianist. He is also a composer and his charming “And the Waltz goes on” featured high in a recent album by Strauss specialist André Rieu. All in all, his is a many-sided talent.

I do not suppose he is a saint and his current wife, exotic Colombian Stella Arroyave, is his third. He does not enjoy the company of “posh actors” and he has been rude about some co-stars, describing Shirley MacLaine as “the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with”. He is by no means a green room luvvie. Instead he is what we Scots call “a man of parts,” a civilising influence and an undoubted credit to Wales.

SMD

15.08.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014

SUMMER IN SAMOS

Some of my esteemed readers have asked me to sketch in what I actually do when I spend some months in my summer house in Samos. The bare fact is that I do not do much. I must quickly disabuse those who expect me to climb peaks, trek over mountain tracks, swim or sail the ocean blue or cycle round the verdant island. Younger people do such things enthusiastically while I potter about, taking my pleasures gently and snoozing easily after the least strenuous of activities. This year, after my dear wife Betty broke her leg at Easter, we have been particularly idle and limited but Samos is accommodating to old crocks too and we have relaxed as joyfully as ever.

The Aegean island of Samos is well blessed. From mid-May until end-September the weather is reliably balmy. The temperatures hover around the high 20s C to the mid-30s C with occasional heat waves. Rain is very rare, but being an island, the sea breezes are welcomingly cool. The sea gets warmer and warmer as the summer progresses, vegetation flourishes from underground springs and there is none of the aridity of some other Greek places. The skies are more or less cloudless by day and packed full of stars by night. Sunset is a spectacular lowering of a red ball of fire and the August full moon was brightly lovely.

Our compact house in pleasant, but by no means picture-postcard, Karlovasi has all mod.cons including of course vital air conditioning. Our second-floor veranda, where we sit out regularly has views to the sea, to the town and its large cathedral of the Panagia nearby, and to the green hills leading up to the Kerkis mountain range. We walk 2 minutes to a local supermarket and even less to our welcoming Kafeneon where we and the locals assemble for drinking and traditional taverna food cheerily dispensed by owner Gianni and our friend and neighbour Christina. The main shops are within easy walking distance (as are the much-visited cash machines!) and so too is the agreeable main square with its cafes. The ferry-port to and from Athens is about 2 kms away – nowhere vital is a long journey.

A view from our veranda

We spend much time in our Painted Courtyard, about which I have written at length already. Our dynamic neighbour and friend Theofilaktos has this year built a large 6-seater wooden table and a bamboo canopy and we sit out there most days. We are currently surrounded by purple dahlias, mauve cyclamen, red busy-lizzies and blue forget-me-nots, fortified by aromatic thyme and lemon-grass, to name but a few. The kitchen garden on the balconies gives us tomatoes in abundance, wild strawberries, beetroot, lettuces and potatoes; as some become exhausted Theo will sow broccoli for the winter. Betty is painting decorative flower pots and pebbles with fish designs. Strings of home-grown red peppers hang from some shutters and we are coaxing red Brazilian Jasmine to bridge the courtyard completely over seductive ropes.

We eat our own salads in the courtyard and Theofilaktos’ partner Christine is a good cook. Yesterday we had papouchaiki, (minced beef glazed with cheese inside aubergine), her moussaka is tremendous as are her stuffed peppers and tomatoes. Theofilaktos is master of the BBQ, grilling chicken, pork and fish, last time delectable fagri (sea bream) with great potato trimmings and a tasty sauce. The wood-scented smoke attracts other friends and locals who often drop in for a sociable drink and a chat.

In the heat, the lure of swimming is irresistible. The nearby beaches are all shingle and not to my taste. For sea bathing I prefer to drive to the mainly sandy shore at Votsalaikia on the South of the island or even better the golden strand at Psilli Ammos outside Vathi with its busy fish taverna. Our standard routine instead is to swim at the excellent pool at the Samaina Inn, 10 minutes away, fringed by its palm trees, sipping ouzo or quaffing lager under an umbrella – bliss!

Samaina Inn pool

There are plenty of events during the summer and we select those we fancy. Hotels will have a weekly Greek night of music on the plangent mandolin, hill villages have cheery wine festivals, there are art and photographic exhibitions, pop concerts, not to mention sailing regattas, car rallies and cycle races. Tourism is a mixed bag at present. The once plentiful Greek tourists have been reduced in numbers due to the Crisis although there are many Greek Americans and Greek Australians generously revisiting their ancestral birthplaces. The hotels fill up in high season with East European tourists on inclusive terms, who often spend hardly a cent at the hotel itself or in nearby shops and tavernas. Better times are awaited.

There are still good restaurants to discover. In Karlovasi itself, Dionysos at Meseo under shady plane trees, run by charming Dimitri, consistently produces delicious chicken and pork kopsidia (grilled cuts) complemented by tasty mastello (cheese pie). (see Trip Advisor under Dionysos Taverna Karlovasi) By the local beach at Potami, Hippy’s restaurant is ever welcoming with kind Apostoli and Yarmo dispensing lightly cooked salads, meat and fish – last week lavraki (sea bass) was particularly toothsome – and cold draught wine. A younger set congregates at the attractive bar and lolls over sofas and beds. The ambiance of Hippy’s is laid-back and coolly appealing. (www.hippy’s.gr)  About 10 miles away in the pretty village of Avlakia is the excellent sea-shore restaurant of Kosmos, run by master chef Tasso. We have never been disappointed here. Tasso, using local produce like marrows, onions, peppers and many fruits, conjures up wonderful salads and original meat and fish dishes – scorpion fish recently was heavenly. The sea laps gently on the shingle nearby and few places can rival the relaxation of this Elysian haven. (see Trip Advisor under Kosmos Avlakia)

The bay at Avlakia from Kosmos

Finally I enjoy walking, very necessary to keep my well-cushioned figure in some kind of trim. Although I do much walking in town, I regularly walk up to the Chapel of the Archangels about 25 minutes away through the family owned vineyards, olive groves and vegetable patches and light the customary candle there. Very soon it will be the Feast of the Assumption on 15 August, a great festival for the Orthodox, and a signal to start harvesting the vines. Some have already started and they fill their trucks with plastic crates full of grapes and take them to the winery. The lively student population, bringing laughter and high spirits to the town, reluctantly drifts back from holiday for exam results and the search for accommodation. The weeks tumble by and it will soon enough be autumn, Keats’ “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”, which is another gorgeous story and a time for yet more writing.

SMD

12.08.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014

STUT-TUTT-TUTTERING ON

One of the few misfortunes slightly to darken my otherwise very happy life was that from the age of about 6 until I was 16, I was afflicted by a pronounced stammer making me, in PG Wodehouse’s phrase, sound like “a soda syphon trying to recite Gunga Din”. No doubt the causes of this stutter lay in some dark and long forgotten childhood neurosis, but in any event I muddled through, probably giving more excruciating embarrassment to my listeners than to myself and I am now quite offensively fluent.

A stutterer quickly learns some devious stratagems. My most dreaded words were those beginning with a “k” or a hard “c” and I carefully avoided having to say “cacophony” or “culinary”. The nightmare scenario would have involved reading aloud “King Kong cooks cabbage” but this unlikely combination mercifully never actually appeared. As a compensation of some kind, I enjoyed singing, where nobody ever stutters, and I also took to writing essays, quietly amusing myself but perhaps boring the pants off others, as at this very moment!

Stuttering is quite common – I am always surprised by how many of my acquaintances say “me too” when I talk of my youthful stuttering days. There is indeed a kind of freemasonry between stutterers. I much softened my attitude towards Ed Balls on learning he had been a fellow sufferer and we are in royal company too with the Stuart dynasty’s James I, Charles I and James II all stammering and, PG again, “making a sizzling sound like a cockroach calling to its young”. Most famously George VI was hopelessly tongue-tied until he was coached by the maverick Australian therapist Lionel Logue and given confidence by his feisty wife and future Queen Elizabeth.

A Stutter conquered - George VI

Demosthenes

Some famous orators have been stutterers too. The great Athenian statesman Demosthenes (384-322 BC), was considered alongside Cicero to be one of the greatest orators of the Ancient World. His Philippics denouncing Philip of Macedon were a high-point in rhetoric; yet Demosthenes in his youth had a speech impediment and he was said to have benefitted from filling his mouth first with marbles before declaiming – which sounds rather drastic.

It is wrong of me to make light of stuttering for it can bring pain, anxiety and humiliation to sufferers. I remember a school friend who stammered terribly and he stamped his feet violently trying to extract the right word; he prospered later as a civil engineer. Another friend could hardly enunciate a single phrase with any coherence. Meeting him years later, he still stumbled but he was master of his trade. He happily sold the retail business his wife and he had created for many millions. 

A role model for stutterers might be a businessman I knew called Roy Withers. He had a very pronounced stammer, contorting every sentence he spoke and it stayed with him all his life. He earned a first in engineering at Cambridge, became managing director of the Davy Corporation and then became chairman and a leader of the buy-out of shipbuilder Vosper Thornycroft, a very successful enterprise. Before taking the chairmanship he frankly spoke of his stammer and said he would understand if the company’s backers rejected his candidacy on that account. Yet Roy was such an acute entrepreneur, such a clear thinker and such a patently honourable man that he had irresistible appeal. An accomplished golfer and a fine painter, he embodied the best qualities of an English gentleman. A happy memory of Roy was his huge pleasure as my bank’s guest at the Last Night of the Proms lustily singing Land of Hope and Glory with no trace of a stutter.

SMD

6.08.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014