The director who is from “another world”, according to Anthony Hopkins

Posted On July 28, 2024July 28, 2024

For someone of the same stature as Anthony Hopkins, collaborating with the best isn’t just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity but the bare minimum when deciding which project to work on. Ranging from Jonathan Demme to Steven Spielberg, Hopkins has been cast by some of the greatest filmmakers working in the industry throughout his illustrious career.

Even though he has naturally slowed down in recent years as age has caught up with him, Hopkins’ filmography is unbelievably stacked with great performances that aspiring actors still regularly revisit for inspiration. One such outing came in The Elephant Man, David Lynch’s 1980 strangely beautiful biopic about Joseph Merrick.

Whenever Lynch’s oeuvre is brought up, film fans always treat it with a degree of caution because his works are often unsettling and subversive, playing with the voyeuristic expectations that we harbour as viewers. However, The Elephant Man might just be one of the simplest and most moving stories Lynch has ever brought to the screen, where a deep sense of empathy can be felt for its central character.

During a conversation with Interview Magazine, Hopkins once opened up about his experience of working on the production of The Elephant Man and compared it to Michael Cimino’s Desperate Hours. According to the actor, he had a lot of conflicts with Mickey Rourke on that film, in contrast to his time on Lynch’s movie, where he was allegedly nice to everyone.

Hopkins said: “I know actors who play a violent part and are vicious on the set. Mickey Rourke was like that a bit [on Desperate Hours]. I dreaded going on the set. Every day, I went on a wing and a prayer. I would go up to people on the set of The Elephant Man and say to them, ‘I hope you’re having pleasant dreams.’ Then I’d wonder, What do I do next? David Lynch was the director. It was weird- you’d get the sense he was living in another world.”

Although that appears to be a compliment, Hopkins also had conflicts with Lynch on set because the filmmaker had complete creative control and the actor did not agree with some of his decisions. According to some reports, Hopkins even tried to get Lynch fired from the project by calling producer Mel Brooks, but thankfully, that didn’t happen.

Hopkins’ turn in The Elephant Man is now seen as one of his finest appearances, which also landed him the role of Hannibal Lecter. “I’d really thought I’d vanished off the American scene,” he added in the same interview. “So it was a surprise when Jonathan Demme asked me to do Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs… I think it was The Elephant Man that did it. I had also done M. Butterfly in London, which I think he came to see.”

At the time, Hopkins might not have agreed with all of Lynch’s decisions, but looking back, it’s hard to deny that the American auteur knew exactly what he was doing.

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