Anthony Hopkins names the single worst movie of his career: “Such an awful, awful thing”
In a time just before television truly exploded in popularity to rival cinema, and when streaming was an unfathomable thought more suited to the realms of science fiction, the easiest way for a British actor to make it in the movie business was to cut their teeth on stage first, with Anthony Hopkins being one of many who have followed and continue on the well-trodden path.
Think of any iconic thespian born in the United Kingdom who became a legend in Hollywood, and the common thread is that they were all experienced theatre veterans first: Hopkins, Michael Caine, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Ian McKellen, and Ben Kingsley are a scant few of them.
However, the snootier folks who saw the stage as vastly superior to the screen often turned their noses at their peers for trying to crack America. When Hopkins took his first leading role in a film, he was accused of being a sellout. Pat came the response from his end, “nobody makes money playing Shakespeare”, and could you really argue with that?
He truly, madly, deeply didn’t give a fuck, and he never has. The two-time Academy Award winner despises the politics of Hollywood and has instead leveraged it to become incredibly successful and eminently wealthy. He loathes awards season despite having a bulging trophy cabinet, and he detests actors despite making it his livelihood. Talk about being a passionate hater within the system.
Hopkins has never been one for pleasantries, and his penchant for cutting through the bullshit and getting straight to the point was never more pronounced than when he cast judgment on his first American production, 1974’s Goldie Hawn-led dramedy, The Girl from Petrovka.
“The worst film ever,” he declared blankly, “I didn’t even see it. I played the Russian boyfriend, but it was just such an awful, awful thing.” Adapted from George Feifer’s novel of the same name, Hopkins did indeed play the Russian boyfriend, left on the outside of a love triangle looking in when Hawn’s Soviet ballet dancer falls for Hal Holbrook’s American journalist.
Critics firmly agreed with Hopkins, so at least he was hardly alone in blasting the film as a wretched work of cinema. On the plus side, he did get the self-proclaimed worst movie of his career out of the way early by reaching into the bottom of the barrel with his very first production backed by a major American studio, ensuring the only way from there was up.
It would be another three years before he appeared in another Hollywood picture, only for Oscar-winning West Side Story and The Sound of Music director Robert Wise’s Audrey Rose to bomb at the box office. Did the third time mark the charm? No, it did not. Not for Hopkins anyway, after he similarly savaged his performance in Richard Attenborough’s 20th Century Fox-backed Magic, even though it turned a tidy profit and earned him a Golden Globe nomination. Well, he’s done pretty well for himself regardless.
