Anthony Hopkins

I have dual citizenship; it just so happens I live in America. I would like to go back to Wales. I'm obsessed with my childhood, and at least three times a week dream I am back there.

The Welsh people have a talent for acting that one does not find in the English. The English lack heart.

People ask, 'Should I call you Sir Hopkins?' But I say, 'No. Call me Tony,' because it's too much of a lift-up.

I worked at the Steel Company Of Wales when I was 17. My job was to supply tools to the guys working the blast furnaces.

I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad... he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

In the theatre, people talk. Talk, talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can't stand it.

I never make conscious decisions.

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.

This industry has been really good to me. It's been a great life. I'm not through yet. I'm ready when you are, Mr. DeMille.

I am a bit of a solitude person - a solitary personality. I like being on my own. I don't have any major friendships or relationships with people.

My weak spot is laziness. Oh, I have a lot of weak spots: cookies, croissants.

I don't have a vast longing for the stage.

I wouldn't use the word 'scared' for my role as Hitchcock, but it was my most insecure. Taking on such a formidable, giant personality such as Hitchcock; he was one of the great geniuses of world cinema. Sheer genius.

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.

I like to take it easy.

Richard Burton came from the same town as me, so I thought I'd follow my nose, and follow my luck. I think I've been very lucky.

We have a Boesendorfer piano that I play every day. It keeps my brain and my fingers active.

I spent two years in the military service, then I trudged around in repertory for quite a while. I somehow wound up at the National Theatre, though, and then I was definitely on my way.

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

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