Anthony Hopkins says sobriety set him free after years of heavy drinking

Anthony Hopkins reflects in a new memoir on the impact of his previous alcoholism, describing it as releasing the worst parts of him. Photo / Getty Images

Anthony Hopkins is ashamed of the ugly side of his personality his alcoholism unleashed.

The Silence of the Lambs Oscar-winner, 87, spent years drinking heavily and has now used his new memoir We Did OK, Kid, to reflect on his decades-long recovery.

He says in the book that alcoholism released the worst parts of him: “I was beginning to lose control of my life. I would pick fights.

“I would attack directors if they dared to look at me the wrong way, and they had a right because they were directing.

“I could turn very nasty, nasty, and that is the ugly side of alcoholism.

“It brought out a brutal side of me. I am not proud of it at all.”

The actor also described how heavy drinking used to be part of an actor’s image.

He said: “In those days, being an actor, you know, you are a rebel, and everyone wanted to be Marlon Brando or James Dean, and so drinking was a tribute.

“You would get fun to a point. I was lucky to hear a little voice one day say, ‘It is going to kill you’.”

Hopkins said the turning point in his life came when he realised he had to stop punishing those around him.

“We do because we have to survive, unless we control it, unless we find ways of, you know, finding ways around it every day, we can come up with, you know, punishing ideas and quarrelsomeness, as I did, but you have to stop. You have to say, ‘Okay, I can’t do this. People don’t deserve this’.”

He credits his sobriety and resilience for the later success of his acting career, which includes portraying figures such as Richard Nixon, Alfred Hitchcock, Pope Benedict, Sigmund Freud, Charles Dickens, Pablo Picasso, King Herod and King Lear.

His role as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs earned him his first Oscar in 1992, followed by another for The Father nearly three decades later.

Reflecting on his later life and happiness, Hopkins said he is content.

He married his third wife Stella Arroyave, 69, in 2003, and says in his memoir: “She broke me wide open, helped me overcome the old feelings of regret and anxiety in a way that’s set me free.”