Transcription
Approaching 88 years of age, I wake up in the morning think, I'm still here. I get tearful, not through sadness, but through the wonder of having been alive. If you want to waste your life being in resentment, fine, go ahead. >> It's not in my can. >> Not affected. [music] >> I could carry resentments over the past, this and the other, but that's death. You're not living. You have to acknowledge one thing. Life is painful. Sometimes people get hurt, some we get hurt. But you can't live like that. When they cover the earth over you, that's it. We move on. We come full circle. We dip down to that's all, folks. And that it was all a dream. Anyway, the only meaning I can put to it is that everything I sought and yearned for found me. I didn't find it. It came to me.
>> There's no doubt that Sir Anthony Hopkins has lived a life full of extraordinary accomplishments and fulfillment. Yet behind that remarkable legacy lies a pivotal moment. >> Now everything's changed. >> A moment in 1975 when an inner voice spoke to him, forever changing the course of his life. I was drunk driving my car here in California in a blackout. [music] No clue where I was going. And it was a moment when I realized that I could have killed somebody or myself, which I didn't care about, but I could have killed a family in a car, you know. And I realized that I was an alcoholic. And I came to my senses and I said to it was an ex agent of mine at this party in Beverly Hills. I said, "I need help." So I made the fatal phone call to an intergroup [music] in LA, 12step program. So we'll send somebody over to meet you. I said, "No, I'll come to you." So we went to this intergroup office. So 11:00 precisely looked at my watch and this is the spooky part. Some deep powerful thought or voice spoke to me from inside and said it's all over now. You can start living and it has all been for a purpose. So don't forget one moment of it.
>> And it was just a voice from the blue >> from inside deep inside me. But it was vocal, male, reasonable like a radio voice and it was a monotone but it's it's all over. The craving to drink was taken from me or left >> weird stuff. I don't know have any theories except I you know divinity or that power that we all possess inside us that creates us from birth life force whatever it is it's a consciousness I believe that's all I know but my whole life has been like that but what happened that morning when that voice said it's over now you can start living and it has all been from for a purpose so don't forget one moment moment of it. I knew that was a power way beyond my understanding. Not up there in the clouds, but here in here. So, I chose to call it at that moment God. I didn't know what else to call it. It's strange how sometimes life has [music] to break us to wake us. Sobriety didn't just give him back his life. It revealed a [music] new one. It's almost like this quiet voice from within guided him to simply wake up [music] and live. We all have problems. We've all got limitations. But I do believe that if you say wake up and live, we actually tap into a power that's in ourselves which helps us to do not everything but some things. I discovered that I could compose music. I discovered that I could write. I discovered through my lovely wife Stella that I could paint. And I remember she was an example because she changed my life. She found some drawings in some old scripts of mine just after we got married. She said, "These drawings, you did these." Yeah. She You got to paint. I said, "I can't paint." She said, "Of course you can. Just do it." So I then bought some canvases and acrylic paints and pens and inks and I just do it.
>> Art can be a way of connecting to something pure like the simple act of being alive. It can also allow us to express something that cannot be put into [music] words, freedom. But something that can often hold us back from feeling free is resentment. In order to move forward in life, we have to let go of the past. If you want to waste your life being in resentment, oh 50 years later, 58 years later, fine, go ahead. It's not in my can. See, we can I could carry resentments over the past, this and the other, but that's stealth. You're not living. You have to acknowledge one thing that we are imperfect. We're not saints. We do the best we can. Life is painful. Sometimes people get hurt. Some we get hurt. But you can't live like that. You have to say, "Get over it." And if you can't get over it, fine. Good luck to you.
>> Once you release the grip of anger and resentment, the world opens in ways you never imagined. Hopkins reminds us that life isn't about controlling every outcome or keeping score of [music] what's been done to us. It's about showing up and noticing the small miracles that surround [music] us every day. Because when we stop carrying the weight of the past, we finally have the space to see life in all its mystery, beauty, and wonder.
>> Do you feel like you achieved your dreams? >> Oh, yeah. I I didn't know if they were dreams. They just happened to me. Uh cuz I can't take credit for them at all. I I cannot I mean, my life is a mystery to me. I'm not trying to sound uh ultra modest or humble, but I have to confess that I don't understand how it all happened. The miracle is I look at my hands, you know, my hands are an 87 year old man's [music] hands. But the miracle of it is I'm still here. And that's not a mathematical formula. That's a miracle of life that's in us all. the heart that still beats. I look at my cat. I watch him sleeping out for the count. And I look at the miracle of his life. A little cat, the miracle, the sheer miracle. To dismiss it is a sacrilege.
>> Hopkins finds [music] beauty in the simple things in life. A beating heart, a sleeping cat, the hands that have carried him through decades. And yet, through all these miraculous moments comes perspective. They serve as a reminder [music] that nothing is permanent. Therefore, life cannot be taken too seriously. You know, if I start taking myself too seriously, [laughter] I do think it's only a job. It's only a it's only acting. So, for me, they're just pastiches, little dabs of paint in one's life. You get to a certain age in life, you're going through, you got ambitions, you got great dreams, ah, and everything's fine. And there on the distant hill is death. And you think, well, now is the time to wake up and live and really enjoy it. Ambition and dreams fade when you take a [music] step back. Life isn't about achievements. It's about presence, about noticing the moments before the final curtain. With this point of view, legacy serves very little purpose. a legacy. I'd never think about it. I never think about it when they cover the earth over you. That's it. We move on. I remember going to I was asked by the widow of Lawrence Libret if I would read the last lines of King Leah at the casket in this little church in Sussex. And After that, we got into our cars and went to um the crerematorium and I was sitting next to Maggie Smith, the great actress Maggie Smith and there was the casket and finally was the curtain. You could hear the rollers taking them into the crerematorium into the flames. Maggie Smith said, "What a final curtain." And you think, God almighty, what is it all about? The wonder of all that energy that had gone into his life or anyone's life, seeing my own father dying, you know, going to the hospital the night he died. I felt his feet that it meant of a dead cold. He'd gone. And as I stood there that silent night in that empty sounding hospital in South Wales, a voice again came to me. You're not so hot either. This is what'll happen to you. It's a great wakeup call when you know that. But what it is, it's an awakening. Several awakenings and epiphanies. We think, "Yeah, that's right. The only meaning I can put to it is that everything I sought and yearned for found me. I didn't find it. It came to me. I had one moment when I decided to change my life.
>> When I was a little boy, I dreamed of where I am now. >> And I remember saying to my father, "One day, I'll show you." Certain moments in our life, we get little signals, little flashes. >> I may have had a vision. I don't know. >> Well, I was told I would be a failure. I was told I would amount [music] to nothing. didn't have much hope but everything happened for me. Now maybe at that moment when I said I'll show you maybe that sent a spark off. I don't know maybe something divine went off in me and I don't know how that happens [music] but it's happened to me and from that spark Anthony Hopkins has created one of the most iconic careers in cinematic history. Since his career began 74 years ago, he's accumulated two Academy Awards, four BFTA awards, two Prime Time Emmy Awards, and a Lawrence Oliver Award. Across his vast film, [music] theater, and television career, there's something that everyone can resonate with. He's lived a life only [music] one can dream of, which is suitable considering his profound philosophy that life is an illusion. Whether you're Christian or a believer or Catholic or Protestant or Muslim or Hindu, it's all the same. Life is a dream. And this is beyond religion or spirituality [music] is that this is all an illusion. Maya, because my [music] life has been such I'm not sure where the reality is, but when you look at our own lives, we don't know what [music] reality is. We don't know what life is. We don't know what time is. We could be dreaming in this at this moment. We don't know. the self as a kind of fiction.
>> None of it makes any logical left brain sense to me. There have been books written about it. Yung wrote about that. There's something in us that we and deeply understand. That's how asleep the human race is. So our whole history has been one of a slumber. All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
>> It's a dream within [music] a dream to quote Ed Galleno. They are not long the days of wine and roses. that of a misty dream, a path emerges for a while, >> then closes within the dream. >> In this dream, within a dream that we call life, Hopkins credits something within [music] ourselves that stretches far beyond all religions, something that is always inside all of us, but is still so easily overlooked. [music]
>> I think there's a superior consciousness in all of us that we [music] touch into sometimes. I don't know if I believe in anything. I mean I deity but I believe whatever that thing is that we talk about for centuries. I think it's just within us. [music] I read someone I can't remember whether it was in the Old Testament or I think it was a shaman maybe Carlos Castanada but the shaman said it was a [music] drought. Cattle were dying. People were dying in a desert. And the shaman said, "Build [music] the ditches. Dig the ditches for the rain." And they said, "There is no rain. Dig the ditches and the rain will come." Remarkable things have happened in my life by by just wishing or asking for something for a bit of help. He said, "Can and I don't believe I'm not a I'm an agnostic, I guess. [music] Is there any way you can help me or whatever?" And there's something inside us that will respond. I believe I I really believe that [music] we have to make our lives because life is tough. We have to believe in the power of life.
>> Now you non-believers may say, "Oh, that's [music] nonsense." Well, believe what you want. That's the rational mind. I don't think the rational mind is working too well at the moment. It's the [music] irrational mind, the subconscious. The subconscious mind is a tool we can use for our [music] benefit and is certainly one of the great mysteries of life. However, [music] Hopkins takes this a step further in expressing everyday existence as one profound miraculous mystery. All I know is that there's a bigger mystery in my life than I can even comprehend. I don't know what I am. I don't know where I came from. I don't know why I'm going. I have no idea what made me come from my father, my mother, my grandfather. But Jerry, I don't know what [music] I consist of. I have no idea. But I believe that something underneath it is miraculous.
>> I feel [music] every day as I get older anyway is that it's all a miracle. I mean, my heart beats, [music] lungs breathe. That is an extraordinary an extraordinary phenomenon.
>> All these years late 82, my heart is still beating. >> My body is functioning as far as I know. Um I feel relatively [music] sane. But what I do know is that I know nothing. Now [music] I am completely clueless because I've lived to such an age that I realize that my knowledge [music] is meaningless. That of myself I am nothing. That we are not special. Once you begin to believe in, you know, um terminal uniqueness, absolute specialness, then your life is not worth living because we are not special.
>> We're just ashes at the end. That is the great fe for me to quote TS Elliot or Odin. I've seen the moment of my greatness flicker and I have [music] seen the eternal footman hold my coat and snicker and in short I was afraid. That's the wonderful thing. Oh my you know there was a door to which I had no key. There was a veil through which I could not see. Some little talk a while of thee and me and then no more of thee and me. That's the greatest spiritual ethic of alter. Know nothing. If you have certainty, you're dead. Certainty destroys people. Hitler destroyed 40 million people because [music] he was certain. Stalin destroyed millions of his own people. Certainty because he knew. No one knows. Perhaps [music] then it is because Hopkins has no certainty in life that he is able to live such an extraordinary one. Through this methodology of uncertainty, [music] he grows by living in the present moment. When we stop reminiscing on the past or looking for the future for happiness, we are able to fully [music] embrace where we are now.
>> Believe in the life course. My philosophy is [music] get on with it. Enjoy it. I just take it easy and think, well, what's to be will be. I've got one thing [music] that helps me through. I say today is that tomorrow I was so worried about yesterday. [laughter] >> Tomorrow doesn't exist. Next hour does not exist. It's all potential. [music]
>> I know people who live in the past, they just live there all the time. talking about something that happened to them 30 years ago. They're like zombies and I can't hang out with those people. I know them, but I can't spend more than 5 minutes with them because I feel so guilty about being happy when they're so little because it's a, you know, life's in session. For many years, I thought life was a big rehearsal for the big event. And somebody in Los Angeles said, "Tony, this is the big event. Life is in session." You know, we spend so much time thinking it's a rehearsal for the big event, the big red carpet in the sky. And it's not. [music]
>> And it's no secret Hopkins life has been one massive event indeed. Recently, [music] he has accepted the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Joy Awards for his immense success in the film industry. [music] Despite his undeniable success, he's cautious to not let his ego get the best of him. During his lifetime achievement speech, he said, >> "At this time of my life, I'm just happy to wake up in the morning and realize I'm still here."
>> So, how do you explain [music] the fact that you reach the pinnacle of your craft? >> I have no idea. As I say, I cannot take credit for anything. You see, the ego is the most dangerous part of us. Ego is the enemy. You have to have a little bit of it to keep moving. But you let that get out of control. Then you have the power freak. You see them in the papers every day. the corruptness of corporations, the greed, [music] the power, the belief that they're gods.
>> I know of people who cannot communicate. They have body gods around them, you know, and they have an entourage and nobody's allowed to talk to them. Well, okay, if that's what they want, but it's a terrible life, I think, cuz you can't you can't function. You cannot function. And it's it is all about the ego. The most powerful force is the ego, and it's a killer. You need it. It's the bur under the saddle that keeps you moving. But you have to be in control of it and constantly on guard against it, you know, and to not make demands, but make requests and um be respectful. I think that's all. And if I'm cruel or disrespectful to someone, then I'm going to pay the price for it. So, I've learned over the years slowly and I'm a sinner like everyone else. I've learned over the years to respect people, to be kind, [music] and if I'm angry about something, fine. I'm angry. That's I'm only human. and one remarkable [music] human he is. He's proven to be not only a successful actor but also a profound [music] source of wisdom. There's something we can all learn from the immense [music] intellect of Sir Anthony Hopkins.