From the magazine
Anthony Hopkins does not enjoy the company of other actors, says Geordie Greig in Tatler. When he’s not working, the Oscar-winning British actor prefers solitary activities such as painting, playing the piano, and gardening. And on those rare occasions when he does socialize, it’s not with his fellow players. Hollywood parties, he finds, are just too affected—“all that salmon-sandwiches-and-white-wine brigade and people smoking cigarettes with their middle fingers.” He even shrinks from socializing with actors he does admire, out of an acute self-consciousness. “Whenever I meet actors, too, I’m so nervous. I think back to people like Judi Dench, a perfectly charming, nice woman, and I’m so nervous around people like that. I don’t know what it is. I am paralyzed with fear. It’s not their fault, it’s me.” Tom Cruise is another actor whose friendly overtures he rejected. “After I finished Mission: Impossible II—and I loved working with Tom—I was in a difficult situation. Tom, being a nice guy, said, ‘Let’s all go off for dinner.’ My agent phoned him and said, ‘Tony hates dinners.’ He explained that after I had done the work I didn’t want to socialize, to sit around with actors talking about how wonderful they all are. It’s pretty boring. Years ago I did it, but I guess now I want to be private.”
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