Lives: actor Anthony Hopkins' good time on his 80th birthday
On December 31,
Anthony Hopkins will
say goodbye to 2020 celebrating his
83rd birthday.
In the year of the coronavirus pandemic, the Welsh actor has managed to
return to the Oscar career
thanks to his work in
The Father
, an intimate drama where he plays a father with dementia.
But it is also that his videos during confinement have made him one of the
kings of social networks.
One more cherry on a career full of triumphs in which he has also faced
addiction to alcohol,
a now non-existent relationship with his daughter or
depression
.
Hopkins was born on New Years Eve 1937 in
Margam, a suburb of the Welsh city
of Port Talbot.
The only son of a baker,
as a child he did not excel in studies or sports, so his parents ended up sending him to
boarding school
, thus trying to discipline him.
"I learned poorly, which left me
exposed to ridicule and
gave
me an inferiority complex.
I grew up absolutely convinced that I was stupid," he told
The New York Times
about his childhood, which he described as
"useless and completely confused."
A chance meeting with Richard Burton, a
fellow Welshman who grew up near Port Talbot, inspired Hopkins, who wanted to imitate the Hollywood star.
"I wanted to be famous.
I wanted to be rich. I wanted to be successful,
make up for what I thought was an empty past. And I became all those things," said the actor in another interview with the same medium.
He soon
achieved everything
he set his mind to, but as he raced up professionally,
his personal life began to collapse.
In 1972, and after six years of marriage, he
left his first wife,
the actress Petronella Barker (78),
and their daughter, just 14 months old.
His relationship with Abigail Hopkins (52), actress and singer, briefly recovered in the 1990s, but
they have not had any contact
for years
.
In 2018 Hopkins told the Radio Times that he did
n't even know if he had any grandchildren.
"I have no idea. People break up.
Families break up and you know, life goes on.
People make decisions. I don't care," he said.
The actor, along with his third and current wife, Stella Arroyave.
Going back to the 1970s, Hopkins suffered from a
serious addiction to alcohol.
Until one day he woke up in a hotel in Arizona not knowing how he got there from Los Angeles (there are more than 800 kilometers between the two cities).
"I thought, I have to stop this because I am going to kill someone or myself. My life, from that moment, acquired a new meaning," said the actor, who
on December 29, 1975 stopped drinking.
In fact, he has just published a video on his social networks where he celebrates that he has been sober for 45 years.
Shortly before, Hopkins met
his second wife,
Jennifer Lynton (73), a secretary at Pinewood Studios who was commissioned to pick up the actor from Heathrow airport.
The reason: the night before he had gotten so drunk that he had missed the flight, according to the
Daily Mail
.
In 1973, that is, one year after Hopkins' divorce, the couple married.
The marriage lasted 29 years,
but not precisely because
of Hopkins'
fidelity
.
In those almost three decades the actor lived different romances, transcending his
adventures
with the model Joyce Ingalls and with the scriptwriter Francine Kay.
In fact, in the last years of their relationship Hopkins and Lynton reached an agreement whereby each would remain where he was best: he in Los Angeles performing and she, in London dedicated to his charities.
Professionally,
The Silence of the Lambs
earned Hopkins
the fame he had so desired, in
addition to his first Oscar, and this good streak continued with acclaimed films such as
What Remains of the Day
or
Nixon
, for which he received his second and third nomination, respectively, for the Film Academy Awards.
Since then the actor
has not stopped working,
flirting even with the
Thor
and
Transformers
franchises
or the
Westworld
series
.
But it was his third wife who, in his words, saved him from a new decline.
See this post on Instagram
On March 1, 2003, again, less than a year after their divorce,
Hopkins married Stella Arroyave
(65), 18 years younger than him.
The actor had started the relationship with his future wife a year and a half earlier
in the antique store
that she ran in Los Angeles.
"He met me when I had an emotional downturn. I didn't know I had it. In fact, I thought I was happy. But I was
struggling with an incipient depression.
I didn't trust anyone, least of all women," said the actor.
"It is very positive.
I have learned from her to take life in the way that comes," he added about Stella, of Colombian origin.
See this post on Instagram
Arroyave has also encouraged Hopkins to
cultivate an interest in painting,
and some of his colorful paintings of huge eyes are now selling for
$ 80,000
according to
W Magazine
.
It is also she who captures many of the viral moments of the actor, who has become
a star of
social
networks
.
Her most viral moments include her routines during confinement, especially when she plays the piano alongside her cat Niblo.
See this post on Instagram
Hopkins has also supported Stella in the movie world.
Shortly after meeting, she played a supporting role in the 2003 film
La mancha humana
alongside the actor.
In
Slipstream
, 2007, both embody the leading couple.
And
now Stella is making her directing debut
with the movie
Elyse
, in which Hopkins works under her command.
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