Anthony Hopkins names the “most satisfying” role of his career: “That was my favourite”

Posted On January 28, 2026January 28, 2026

As one of the biggest names in Hollywood, Anthony Hopkins is never spoilt for choice when it comes to options and opportunities.

Even better is that, unlike his peers, he doesn’t seem to really care all that much about who he gets to work with and who he doesn’t, which is interesting when you consider that most actors have their bucket lists of people and filmmakers they’d like to cross paths with at some point in their careers.

Hopkins, on the other hand, is free from the shackles of wishful thinking, instead preferring to focus on his own personal challenges and achievements. As he once put it himself during a chat with JoBlo, “Philosophically, I’ve reached a point in my life that I’m at a good age where I’ve done everything I wanted to do. And to be free of wanting to work with Mr Scorsese or whoever. It’s wonderful to not care.”

There is, of course, one obvious reason why Hopkins has been able to reach such a strong level of unbothered, and it’s not just because he’s one of the more prolific actors in film history. Hopkins might be a global treasure, but his ethos is also heavily rooted in what success and ambition actually mean, and he no longer chases them the same way as he used to.

In fact, Hopkins used to chase fame the way many people in the business do, which, when coupled with the so-called joy of enjoying the more celebratory quirks of the job like drinking, meant that he was once pretty difficult to work with. But once he got sober, things shifted, and he adopted a mindset that was very much geared towards everything being an “illusion”.

As he reflected to The Irish Times, “I look back on it, and I think, ‘It’s all a dream, anyway.’ Of that I am convinced. To me, it’s an illusion, that’s all.”

He added, “I don’t know much about anything, except I know that what I do now is not of any importance, in the scheme of things.”

For most of Hopkins’ fans, his magnum opus will always be his stint as the terrifying cannibal Hannibal Lecter, a performance so iconic that most people will never be able to extract his face from that of the franchise’s horrific cannibal murderer, an association that no doubt led him to his other roles in the horror and thriller genres, including The Rite and Solace.

It probably comes as no surprise, then, that Hopkins loves the Hannibal Lecter franchise for many of the same reasons that audiences do, not to mention the fact that it propelled him to the level of fame he craved at the time. But the role he calls one of his ultimate favourites was another classic in his filmography, 1993’s Remains of the Day, in which Hopkins plays a butler who falls in love with his boss’ housekeeper, played by Emma Thompson.

“Remains of the Day… that was one of my favourites,” he told JoBlo, concluding, “I think that was one of my favourites, yeah, that was my favourite. I enjoyed The Silence of the Lambs, of course. That was fun to do. I think Remains of the Day was the best… that was the most satisfying thing.”

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