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Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Anthony Hopkins to this program. He is one of the finest actors working in film today with a resume that includes, of course, "Silence of the Lambs," "Amistad," "Remains of the Day," "The Lion in Winter - " I could do this all night. On November 16 you can catch him in the movie "Beowulf," which also stars Angelina Jolie. Here now, a scene from "Beowulf."

[Clip]

Tavis: So Mr. Hopkins, before you walked on the set, I had to ask for a ruling whether to call you Sir Anthony Hopkins or not, and I was told that while you have been knighted, you don't particularly prefer to be called Sir Anthony Hopkins.

Sir Anthony Hopkins: Well, living in America, no, I like to be informal. People call me Tony. But living in America, Americans tend to get it wrong anyway. They say, "Sir Hopkins." So I say, "Just for simplicity's sake, just call me Tony." It's easier.

Tavis: (Laughs) But the proper way to say it, though, for the Americans who are saying it wrong would be what, specifically?

Hopkins: Oh, well, in England, they say, “Sir Anthony.”

Tavis: Sir Anthony.

Hopkins: But I don't use it. It was a great honor, but I don't know. It really was a great honor, but I feel more comfortable this way.

Tavis: Well, maybe by the time we conclude the conversation I'll get around to calling you Tony, but for now you've earned the right to be called Mr. Hopkins, at the very least.

Hopkins: Okay.

Tavis: All right. "USA Today" did a poll recently that found you are the number one scariest villain. Well, not you, but Hannibal Lecter, the number one scariest villain of all time.

Hopkins: Oh, yeah.

Tavis: That's a high honor, I think.

Hopkins: Is that an honor? (Laughter) I heard about that, yeah.

Tavis: You played it well, obviously, for people to think after all these scary projects, for you to be number one.

Hopkins: That's the only one I'll be remembered for, is the villain. But I'm not really like that.

Tavis: Yeah. But the voice - the voice is similar in person.

Hopkins: Yeah, I guess so. It's a long time ago now. I haven't seen "Beowulf" yet. I'm going to see it, the premiere, on Monday. That's the only piece I've seen, that was with Ray Winstone, who plays Beowulf. It looks interesting, this kind of photo-real or semi-photo-real thing. We made it three years ago, or two years ago, (unintelligible).

Tavis: It's probably made two years ago.

Hopkins: Yeah, and it's very complex. You go into the studio, there's no set. You have no costume on. They put a beard on you at the beginning, and they have big beards and the costume and all, and then they photograph you. It's all computers. They get all the body and shape and then they cover you with these little pearls, which are reflected into the computer. I don't know, these geniuses. They all seem to be about 12 years old, these guys who make the (unintelligible).

Tavis: It's amazing - speaking of 12 years old, it's amazing that this project, this story, written a long, long time ago -

Hopkins: Yeah.

Tavis: A story that's pretty familiar, and yet written by an anonymous author, which I was reminded of, how ironic that is.

Hopkins: Yeah, it is a saga, those sagas of the old Saxton world, and they came from the Nordic mythology, and northern Europe. And they were the times of the great storytelling. It was before writing and before people could only - and Latin was the main language in Saxton, so yeah, it's interesting that it's been resurrected after all these years.

Tavis: How do you explain "Beowulf?" How do you sell it, how do you market it, to your point, because it is a complex story, when you want people to go see it? I was trying to figure out in introducing you how to explain it, and it really is a complex story to try to explain.

Hopkins: I don't get myself involved in marketing. That's up to Robert Zemeckis and the film company. But I guess it's a sort of movie that'll appeal to a young audience, or maybe an adult audience as well, because it's - like what was the thing they did recently? They filmed it in New Zealand. What was that?

Tavis: "Lord of the Rings?"

Hopkins: "Lord of the Rings." That sort of movie, and I think it's what kids seem to want now. And of course there's a lot of excitement in the movie industry, which I take with a pinch of salt, that it's all going to revolutionize everything. We're all going to go to the moon with it, and I said, “Oh, yeah, good.”

So it's a new development in movie-making. I don't know if it will replace actors; maybe it will. But it's interesting. Everything changes, everything. Fashions change and styles change, so maybe this will actually be something new for the movie. It's in 3D, as well.

Tavis: Right. To your point now, should actors be offended by that - small O, not a large O - offended by that, the notion that this kind of technology might in the future replace so much of what we have relied on true thespians to do for us all these years?

Hopkins: Well, I think if they are offended by it they should get a life of their own, because everything develops and changes. I don't particularly - I don't take any offense. It's a peculiar way of making a movie, though, and I guess it works. I haven't seen it, but what I saw was pretty impressive. But it's not total photo blackness. It's about 98 percent there.

So it has that sort of cartoonish look, like "Polar Express" with Tom Hanks. I guess it's the whiz kids, the computer geniuses, who are fascinated by this. I've never been caught up in that world at all. I'm very detached from all of that, as you can tell, probably, about movies, and I never take anything that seriously. I just made a movie myself which is an anti-movie, called "Slipstream," and I just -

Tavis: I want to talk about that, yeah.

Hopkins: I just wanted to make that to annoy people and (laughter) to make them angry, to pull the rug from under them. Because everyone gets so - and it's surprising, how much people get angry if you offend their structured thinking. And I want to say, “Well, it's only a movie, why get upset?” But it was my own personal philosophy, and I did it deliberately to poke people in the eye. Just to nudge them. I did it for fun. It was my own personal philosophy.

Tavis: I want to come back to "Slipstream" in a just couple of minutes here, if I can. Before I do that, though, I want to ask about this "Beowulf" project, since you gave us some insight to how the movie was shot, how it - I'm trying to find the right word here - how it challenges or changes your acting when you are not opposite other people, but opposite green screens and machinery and in empty rooms, and they're dropping stuff in technologically later on. How does that challenge or change what you do as an actor?

Hopkins: It's not much of a challenge. In fact, the studio, it's probably as big as this studio. And they have a grid of cameras and goodness knows what, cameras like those. And you are acting with the actors. I was working with Ray Winstone, you saw him on that scene. So you're there. But you don't have a set. You don't even have chairs like this.

You have steel and metal and wood structures, and even if you have a drinking goblet, it's made of mesh so that the computer can then add its own - whatever they do at the end of it all. I can't even begin to think. And they have a monitor, a playback monitor. You can't see anything; you just see a lot of moving dots. So you act it as if you are on a set.

And before each take you have to do certain gestures, you have to pull certain faces, so that the camera takes in or the computer takes in all the facial gestures or expressions, movements. You do these silly stand-up things, move about. And everyone has a bit of fun. I suppose the only challenge is you don't get a sense of reality there, and in a way that can be sort of liberating because you don't have to worry about where you are.

You're literally sitting in something like this, or walking around on the floor, which is nothing, just an empty stage. And that was a long time ago, almost three years ago, I believe. So here we are now, it's about to come out - I haven't even seen the movie. I hear it's pretty good. But they can actually - you see, the filmmakers, they're not limited.

They can paint and create a world around you, very much like these other movies you see on the blue screen or green screen, whatever they are. It's beyond me, completely beyond me. I've got to an age now and I just say, “Okay.” I go along with whatever they (unintelligible). (Laughter) I don't try to (unintelligible) - you want me to stand on my head? Ok, I'll do that.

Tavis: Tell me - by my count, now, twice in this conversation you've said you've not seen "Beowulf." You hear that's pretty good, but you've not seen it yet, which makes me ask, what, for you, makes your performance the kind of performance that you're happy with, given that you haven't seen it? For most of us - I can't speak for everybody, but I know certainly for many of us, we can't really critique our performance; we really can't say whether or not we did a good job until we see it.

But I sense a certain confidence in your craft at this point in your career where you don't even need to see it to get the sense that you have done what you wanted to do, that you accomplished what you set out to do. Does that make sense?

Hopkins: Yeah, it does. Well, I don't critique anything anymore. I don't see myself - I know I can do certain work that seems to please people, and when you're actually working at the moment you feel that it's all right. And I remember talking to Robert Zemeckis about that very scene with Ray Winstone, who plays Beowulf.

If I could just try something and try a little bit of subtlety here and then walk away, and I can't remember how it works out. And when you do it, you think well, that seems okay, and they seem to like it. The director said, "Okay, cut. That's fine, let's move on." And so I don't become involved in critiquing myself. I'm not interested, really.

I've not seen the movie. It may sound as if I'm so detached or so disconnected, which I am really. Because it's the way to live a kind of sane life, to not get attached to the work you've done. It's over and done with now. So I don't get caught up in the results at all, which makes for an easier life. So I don't know, maybe I'm terrible in it, I don't know. But I'm told it's pretty good. So I think "Okay, well, I'll take their word for it," and move on.

Tavis: Your attitude - I say it with a small A - your attitude about how you navigate this business of Hollywood is in some ways refreshing to hear, since I talk to folk who do this all the time, but there is a certain detachment that I sense from you that you appreciate the opportunity - and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this business, and yet I get the sense you don't take any of it too seriously.

Hopkins: You're right. I don't. I used to. When you're younger, you take everything seriously. Now it's all gravy on top for me, it's the gravy. I do my work and if it comes out, fine, and if people like it, fine. And if they don't, I have no control over it. So I am completely and totally detached. Because finally, it is only a movie.

When people get angry and (unintelligible) and passionate about it, I say, "Come on, wake up, it's only a movie." Some people say, "How can you treat it like that?" Well, it's not even cynicism, it's just wisdom, I think. You get to a certain point in life, you think well, it's been a good life, I've had a fine career. I've made some good movies and I've made some not such good movies.

It's all a gamble, and at the end of it all I hang up my hat and say, “Adios, amigos.” Because it's not - life is more important than work. Just living and enjoying yourself then getting caught up. I sometimes teach at UCLA - I owe them two weeks, actually, teaching, because I had a doctorate from UCLA. And I'd say to the students when they start getting uptight about it, I say, "Look, if you never acted again, nobody would care. The world would not stop. If I never acted again, nobody would give a damn. The world would not stop."

So I say to them, (unintelligible) "That's how important it is. Nobody finally cares." And that may be regarded as cynicism, but it's not. It's maybe a little grain of wisdom there.

Tavis: I hear the point and I take it. How do you balance that, though in talking to students, since you went there - how do you balance that, though, in encouraging them to pursue their passion? Because that's the other side of what you just laid out.

Hopkins: How do I encourage them?

Tavis: Yeah.

Hopkins: Well, they ask me, they say, "How do you succeed in the business?" I say, "I don't know." Well, when you're younger, you can invest all the passion and hard work in it. I work - when I'm prepared to do something, a film, I work pretty hard at it. I learn my text and I get some ideas about it, and then I'll throw it around and I'll go in the studio or on the stage or whatever I have to do in the rehearsal and say, "How about this?"

And that is an investment. That is something I do take seriously, and I say to young kids, I say, "Take it seriously. You do your preparation, really ground yourself, really get there. But let go of it." Because I was taught the method when I was a kid. Stanislavski. And but the teacher, at the end of my course in this I said, "Well, how do I remember all this?" He said, "You don't. Throw it out of the window. You will learn through experience," and that's what I tell the kids, these young students.

Sure, take it with all the passion you want, put everything you can into it to educate yourself, but at least enjoy it. Don't get ulcers over it. Enjoy it. It's like music. You watch a great musician like Horowitz or (unintelligible) or Quincy Jones or whoever, or some of the great jazz pianists.

They just enjoy it. The sheer joy is the art. It's not about agony, I don't think, anyway.

Tavis: Since you mentioned music, I want to circle back now to "Slipstream," the movie that you are going to tell us more about now. I read that you, like, wrote the movie, directed the movie, did the music for the movie. Tell me about "Slipstream."

Hopkins: Yeah. Four years ago. I wrote it on the instigation of my wife, so I'm not a writer by trade or profession. I can write a letter, I can write a postcard, and that's about it. So I set out to write this movie just for the sheer cussedness of it. I think of it as a 50-years delay of rebellion. I got bored with the same old format. The same old format of life, and we're born, we live, and we die.

I thought, maybe you throw it all over on its head and changed it all around, mess with time, mess with the editing. Do things that nobody's ever done before. And people said, "Well, you've been influenced by David Lynch." Well, I admire David Lynch, but I think I was influenced by the insanity in my own mind when I wrote this movie, and did it for a laugh.

I did it to provoke people. I did it to confuse people. Because in confusion, that's the best state of mind that we can be in. But I didn't write it with a message in mind. I didn't write it to be important. But I asked some actors to join me and they seemed to chase me down the rabbit hole into this kind of strange cacophony of noise and images, and some people like it. Some people are intrigued by it. Some people are angered by it.

Tavis: And you don't care.

Hopkins: No, I'm delighted, because it's annoyed them. It's poked them in the eye, saying, "Wake up." And then the producer, Robert Katz - wonderful producer - he said, "You should write the music as well." I said, "Okay." I don't want it to be an ego trip, but - so I did. That'll probably annoy people even more. (Laughter) So I'm the first actor since Charlie Chaplin who wrote, directed, acted in - I'm not starring in it, I play a nice spot.

But I wrote the music, so. I made the catering as well. Cooked all the - (laughter). So I did it for the sheer cussedness, because I am a cussed kind of guy. I like to mix things up and cause trouble.

Tavis: Your love for music, your exposure to music, comes from where and when?

Hopkins: I was a little boy and my mother sent me to piano lessons when I was six years of age, and that's what I wanted to be, was a musician. So I played the piano and then the years went by and I drifted into this business, into the acting profession by default, really. I didn't have the talent to be a musician or pianist. And it was just by chance I came into this business in 1955.

And I didn't have much of a future because my school record was so bad. And it was a local scholarship in a local acting school. So I tried this audition and they took me in, and much to my surprise, here I am 50 years later - 52 years later - my God. And still moseying around. And I still feel detached from it, as if one day somebody is going to tap me on the shoulder and say, "What are you doing here? You should have been something else."

Tavis: The flip side of that, though, is what you make of the fact that you found yourself to be not just proficient at something, but excellent at something - Academy Award-winning at something that you, by your own admission, found by default. What do you make of that?

Hopkins: Well, I think it's all a strange pattern that's beyond me. I think it was some - Bukowski said, "There are no beautiful people, it's all a trick." And I think life is a trick and success is a trick, and I don't feel particularly different to any other actor. I'm just fortunate. I think it's a trick of imagination. As I say to these young students, dream your dream and see if it will come to fruition. At least dream it. And at the age of 70 - I'm going to be 70 the end of the year - I've broken it down to -

Tavis: New Year's Eve is your birthday.

Hopkins: That's right. That's why I made this movie, "Slipstream," to break out of the norm. Instead of sitting on the recliner watching television for the rest of my life, did something new. I play the piano every day, I read, I stare at the ocean, I do all those sorts of things. And everything is really the gravy on top now. I've got another couple of films coming up, I believe. "Wolf Man," with Benicio Del Toro, and that's in the New Year.

And then I may be doing Hitchcock in the making of the film, "The Making of 'Psycho'." But it's all there. It's there, and if I'm around, I'll do it.

Tavis: What will Anthony Hopkins do for his 70th birthday on New Year's Eve?

Hopkins: Well, I'm going to Wales, where I was born, in Margam, and I'm seeing kids I haven't seen for 65 years. They've all grown. Little girlfriends of mine, and they've all grown up. They've all grown up, and there they all are. And I've met them just recently to make sure I recognize them before the party, and they're all these beautiful women, and it's fun to see them.

All the memories go back over almost 70 year, and my childhood is very much with me in my memory, and my parents have passed on now. And I had a wonderful childhood. I was born in a beautiful part of Wales, and very vivid, the memories. And to see all these kids again after all these years and people who worked with my father in the bakery and all that sort of thing, it's quite something. It's quite a journey backwards.

Tavis: Well, happy birthday, early.

Hopkins: Thank you.

Tavis: Speaking of memory and mind, to your point now, you said something a few minutes ago I want to come back and get before my time runs out, because I hear it. You said that you think that confusion is the best place for us to be in. What did you mean by that?