You can take the man out of Wales, but you can’t stop him from looking up his old street on Google Maps, as they say.
Oscar-winning actor Anthony Hopkins has revealed that he’s constantly thinking of his home town of Port Talbot, Wales – so much so that he visits his old street using Google Maps on a daily basis.
The 88-year-old, who has lived in California’s Los Angeles for over 50 years, revealed that he hasn’t been back to visit his hometown in two years but has released an album of classical music inspired by his childhood in Margam, a suburb of Port Talbot.
When asked by ITV News whether he thinks about Wales regularly, Hopkins said: “I do. All the time. All the time.
“I Google Maps. You can Google things now. I go to streets and then move up the street. I look at photographs of my street in Wales or anywhere really,” he added. “I’m always going back there. Most days, I’m back there somehow. The memories are very powerful.”
The Silence of the Lambs star recently chose to follow his dream of becoming a classical composer by releasing a 12-track album of classical music.
“I’ve been composing music all my life,” he said when announcing the album Life is a Dream in July. “Some of these pieces have lived with me for decades and I still find myself returning to them.”
The song “My Fatherland” is a tribute to his “humble beginnings” in Wales, with Hopkins adding: “I am the son of my father, the baker.”
Hopkins was born in 1937 in Port Talbot’s Margam, where he grew up before leaving to study a the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff. He subsequently caught the attention of fellow actor Sir Laurence Olivier, who invited him to join the Royal National Theatre as his understudy.
He went onto star in National Theatre productions of King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra as well as films including The Elephant Man, The Mask of Zorro and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
He won an Academy Award in 1992 for his portrayal of cannibal psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, and later picked up nominations for his performances in The Remains of the Day, Nixon, Amistad and The Two Popes. He won most recently in 2021 for his role in Florian Zeller’s The Father – playing an elderly man living with dementia.
Hopkins’ album is out now on Decca Classics.
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