THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 24, 1995 TAG: 9512220066
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 127 lines
THE MAN WHO would be Nixon ran his hand over his half-bald head and admitted that he worried about stepping into those particular wing-tips.
``I thought Oliver (Stone) must be crazy when he asked me to play the part,'' Anthony Hopkins said. ``I'm not sure, even to this day, that he isn't, but I'm glad, at age 57, that I had the guts to try it. After all, that's what acting is all about.''
He doesn't sound like him, either.
Oliver Stone, the director of ``Nixon,'' admits that he had two other choices for the part - Tom Hanks and Jack Nicholson. Neither of these stars wanted the role.
Stone claims that he knew Hopkins was right for the part when he saw him in ``Remains of the Day.'' ``Nixon was a loner. The public was his society. He was comfortable before the public, but he couldn't communicate on a personal level. I knew Tony could play this. I told him that we didn't want an impersonation. If he could play the essence, we could make him look enough like the man.''
At the moment, Hopkins looks more than ever unlike Nixon because he is sporting a partially shaven head for his role in ``Surviving Picasso,'' a part which he says ``is difficult, but not as difficult as Mr. Nixon, because not as many people know the way Picasso talked and moved.''
Extreme make-up was initially tried to make Hopkins resemble Nixon. ``I looked in the mirror and I looked like Pinocchio,'' Hopkins said. ``I felt a real sense of despera tion. I felt it just wasn't going to work, any of it. But then I agreed with Oliver that I should reach the role from the inside, not from the outside.
``They agreed,'' he continued, ``that I would do the part with just a hairpiece, contact lenses and heavy eyebrows. The best thing about this was that I didn't have to get up too early in the morning for the makeup.''
The intensity never let up. For the 61 days of shooting time, Hopkins worked 55 days. ``Long, long speeches,'' he said, ``and I had to convey the idea that he tried to be well spoken, but wasn't particularly. I heard, in my studies, the break in his voice. It was a defensive voice. I had to get that.''
He was several days into the filming when he told Stone that he wanted out. ``I simply didn't think I could do it.''
The story went that it was Paul Sorvino, playing Henry Kissinger, who planted seeds of doubt. Sorvino and Hopkins were in an elevator when Hopkins asked for an honest opinion of how he was doing. Sorvino admits that ``I told him I thought he wasn't doing too well - that his accent was terrible.''
After calming his star down, Stone ordered that the actors talk to him, not to each other, about their roles.
``I thought of my father in playing Nixon,'' Hopkins said. ``My father was a baker and a lonely, shy man. When he died, I stood at the foot of his bed and heard my mother say, as she held his hand, `He had so many dreams.' I thought of that in playing Nixon. He was a loner. He was tough and a dirty fighter, but I came away admiring him.''
Hopkins feels that his Welsh beginnings were an advantage, in a way, ``because I came to this role with no pre-judgment. I hadn't chosen a side, the way most Americans have about Nixon. Nixon, you know, is much better liked in Europe than he is here. The Watergate thing was regarded as a rather strange scandal in Europe. There are those who thought it was rather unlikely to depose a president because of an office break-in. In England, we have political scandals that usually involve sex, not-break-ins.
``The main thing I could identify with, in Nixon, was his shyness. I find shyness endearing. It's why I became an actor, you know. I wanted to overcome my shyness.''
He remembers listening on the telly in England when Nixon gave his resignation statement. ``There were people there who booed and said he should, actually, be in jail, but I thought, even at the time, there was something sad about it. When I read the script, I knew it was more than just the tragedy of a single man. I knew it was the tragedy of a political system. Most Americans, I think, have never felt quite the same about politicians since.''
Born in Port Talbot, Wales (``a distressingly boring place''), he was an only child. At 17, he wandered into a YMCA amateur theatrical production and has never stopped acting since. He describes himself as a ``notoriously poor student'' who dropped out of high school to study acting.
It was primarily his piano talents that won him a scholarship to the Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, where he studied for two years. ``I would have liked to have become a concert pianist, but I didn't have the talent or the discipline, so I just became an actor,'' he explained.
``I was profoundly influenced by Richard Burton, who was from the same town as me. When I was 15, I met him and asked him for an autograph. I felt that if he could make it from that town, so could I.''
After serving two years as a clerk with the British Army, he joined the Manchester Library Theater in 1960 as an assistant stage manager. He then went to the Nottingham Repertory Company, where was was advised to go elsewhere for training as an actor. In 1961, he was given a scholarship to London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
In 1965, he auditioned for Sir Laurence Olivier's National Theater. Two years later, he was Olivier's understudy in Strindberg's ``Dance of Death.''
``I never really liked Shakespeare,'' he said. ``It's a challenge, but one that other people love more than me. I grew up seeing American films, and what I really wanted to be was an American film star. I absolutely adore stardom. I love being a star today.''
American television viewers discovered Hopkins in the ABC miniseries ``QB VII.''
He moved to Los Angeles, where he lived for 10 years - doing some very bad TV, such as ``Hollywood Wives.'' (His co-star, James Woods, yells over, jokingly, ``Don't forget to ask Sir Anthony about `Hollywood Wives.' We mustn't let him forget he was in that.'')
In 1974, he made a memorable Broadway debut in ``Equus.'' He won an Emmy for playing Hitler in ``The Bunker'' and was in movies like ``Magic'' (as a demented ventriloquist) and ``The Elephant Man.''
His drinking problem, though, got worse. Beginning back in his London theater days, boozing and rebellion were a part of his demeanor. In the early 1980s, he woke up one morning in Phoenix and had no idea how he got there. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous and eventually beat the bottle.
Thinking his film career was virtually over, he went back to London to try stage again. He did ``King Lear,'' ``Antony and Cleopatra'' and the London production of ``M. Butterfly.'' Then Jonathan Demme asked him to play Hannibal Lecter in ``The Silence of the Lambs.'' He received a second Oscar nomination for ``Remains of the Day.''
As for the fact that he has become a sex symbol to many middle-aged, and younger, women, he merely shakes his head. ``I can't imagine, except for the fact that I sometimes play vulnerable men. I suppose, perhaps, these women like men who are repressed emotionally. I'm not sure. I hear about these women, but I seldom meet them. Are you sure they are out there, somewhere?'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
HOLLYWOOD PICTURES
Nixon (Anthony Hopkins) is comforted by daughter Julie (Annabeth
Gish) as his administration crumbles in ``Nixon.''
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