- Anthony Hopkins says he plays villains the opposite way one would expect.
- The Oscar winner played Hannibal Lecter and now stars as a vengeful car owner in “Locked.”
- He told BI he “just had an instinct” about both roles and knew he could play that kind of part well.
Anthony Hopkins knows what’s really scary, and it’s not what you’re thinking.
The legendary actor, who won his first Oscar for playing the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs,” has a knack for playing memorable villains. The secret, he says, is to subvert the audience’s expectations.
“If you’re playing a villain, play the opposite,” he told Business Insider. “Always choose the opposite side. If you’re playing somebody who’s really evil, play them very pleasantly.”
Hopkins used this tactic in his new thriller “Locked,” in which he plays William, the wealthy, well-mannered owner of a luxury SUV who takes sadistic revenge on Eddie (Bill Skarsgård), a desperate small-time thief who tried to steal his car.
The film’s unique concept — almost all of the action takes place inside the vehicle William has locked Eddie inside — intrigued Hopkins immediately.
He also thought it sounded like a fun, easy job: William only speaks to Eddie in voiceover for the first half of the movie, meaning Hopkins could record much of his dialogue ahead of time. “I didn’t have to show up for work for about two weeks!” he marveled.
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Hopkins was also captivated by his character’s complex motivations, telling BI he knew that William was a role he wanted to play because he’d experienced a similar feeling with “The Silence of the Lambs” decades earlier. That time, the actor had only read a few pages of the script before deciding Hannibal Lecter was “the best part ever.”
“I knew that it was one of those rare roles, one of those unique roles that I knew I could do,” he said. “I just had an instinct, very much as I did with this guy in the film ‘Locked.'”
“Locked” is now in theaters.
