The struggling and conflicted artist is a cliche as old as time, and it was an archetype that ultimately defined Anthony Hopkins. He felt great shame in doing what he wanted to do, but the inner turmoil didn’t prevent him from going down in history as a legend.

To put it bluntly, Hopkins is one of the greatest actors the United Kingdom has ever produced. In a career that dates back over 60 years, he’s built up a body of work across stage, film, and television that’s comparable to any other thespian to have emerged on British shores, which is arguably more impressive because he hated the very profession that he dedicated his life to.

There are certain performers who eat, sleep, and breathe acting, but Hopkins was never one of them. There are talents who dream of making it to the bright lights of Hollywood and plying their trade on the silver screen, reaping the financial benefits that come with it. However, he wasn’t one of them, either.

Instead, Hopkins painted himself as a man who found something he was good at and decided that he was never going to do anything else for the rest of his days, completely against his better judgment. The voice in his ear was trying to tear him down at every turn, with his working-class background and comparative lack of old-fashioned hard graft making him feel uncomfortable in his own skin.

“Acting is a third-rate art,” he flatly shared in a 1969 interview with The Guardian. At the time, he was in the midst of production on When Eight Bells Toll, only his fourth appearance in a movie and his first time playing a leading role. For most up-and-coming actors, it had the makings of a breakthrough, but Hopkins gave off the impression he couldn’t have been more miserable trying his hand at cinema stardom.

“We are all overpaid and over-publicised. I hate actors, but I love acting,” he continued. “I get ashamed of myself for doing it. I know I ought to be doing something else. If I was honest, I’d say I like it because I’m vain, I’m comfortable, I like money and attention, but I really hate the whole setup. I am taking the path of least resistance in doing films, and it makes me feel like a conman.”

There he was, only in his early 30s and playing the main character in a spy thriller, but already stuck in the middle of an existential rut. It was a refreshingly honest and open take, though, with Hopkins confessing that he’d found such an easy line of work that it made him feel guilty, especially when his parents “slaved all their lives in a bakery for peanuts.” By comparison, making a living pretending to be somebody else without having to work his fingers to the bone “seems wrong somehow.”

Those weren’t the only demons that continued to haunt Hopkins during his ascent up the ladder, with the actor caught in the throes of alcoholism for years until he woke up in an Arizona hotel room in 1975 with no idea how he got there, made a vow to himself that he would never drink again, and hasn’t touched a drop since.

Even when his Academy Award-winning performance as Hannibal Lecter made him an international star and household name, he wasn’t happy with his lot. Hopkins held his hands up and admitted that once he’d made it to the top, he started taking things too easy and began phoning in far too many of his performances, which once again forced him to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

Emerging on the other side via the unlikely auspices of Kenneth Branagh’s comic book adaptation Thor, he embarked on a second wind that once again returned him to the summit of the business when The Father made him the oldest person to ever win an Oscar for acting.

Hopkins might hate the profession and everything it stands for relative to a regular 9-to-5, but he’s done alright for himself despite spending six decades harbouring an intense dislike for the very thing he’s mastered.

 Story by Scott Campbell / Source; faroutmagazine.co.uk