Sir Anthony Hopkins: From hellraiser to Hollywood lamb

"Acting is still enjoyable, but there are no more challenges any more for me," announces Anthony Hopkins with a gleeful grin. "No, none at all. I'm much more interested in painting and composing music these days. I've become what I always wanted to be, a jobbing actor. I'm just detached, I do my thing. I work hard at it, but I don't invest my life in it. As long as they pay me on time and I get a good script with a good director, I have fun. That's all."

We're meeting at the actor's favourite beachside haunt, the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica. "I used to stay here a lot before I moved to the States," says Hopkins, telling me that he and his third wife, the Colombian antiques dealer Stella Arroyave, still eat at the hotel - they live a few miles north along the coast in Malibu. He guides me to a table in the hotel café, and looks out towards the Pacific. "You know, I drifted here 30 years ago and stayed [he became a US citizen in 2000]. Some people in Britain think I sold out, but I don't care. I'm a beach bum. I enjoy life," he says, smiling: "Walking on the beach, painting, reading..."

It is a clear, sunny, morning and the star - once notorious for the intensity of his moods, brusque manner and general intolerance towards journalists - is ebullient and jocular, keen to talk about anything - preferably though, anything other than his own brilliant career. Knighted in 1993, he doesn't stand on ceremony. "They come up to me and call me Sir Hopkins," he laughs, "but I always tell everyone, 'just call me Tony'."

He is the picture of good health. Tanned and bearded, white hair brushed back off his face, he looks fit and relaxed. Now 69, his perspective on film-making has undergone a transformation. "I don't need to prove myself; I don't care what anyone thinks, really. It's very different now; I literally learn my lines and show up. But I'm beginning to think that sitting in a damp trailer in the middle of a field somewhere is not the best way to spend my time. So I tend to be very choosy." So why does he continue to make so many films? In the last couple of years he's starred in Proof with Gwyneth Paltrow, The World's Fastest Indian, All The King's Men and Bobby. His upcoming projects include the new thriller Fracture, Beowulf (based on the Anglo-Saxon epic poem), directed by Robert Zemeckis and co-starring Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich, and the new James Ivory drama, City Of Your Final Destination, with Laura Linney.

"I don't know, really," he says with a contemplative sip of iced tea. "The less interested I am, the more they keep offering me roles, and if they seem like fun I'll take them. Life's pretty good."

Yet for all his seeming indifference, the actor's conversation is littered with references to deals he is negotiating, films under discussion and big Hollywood names, which suggests that there continues to be a measure of excitement and involvement. "Morgan Freeman called me the other day and said: 'Do you want to do another film together, you me and Bill Macy?' and I said, 'Yeah, OK'. Anyway, it's about two guys who run a museum and there's an art theft. It's a very sweet, gentle film - but I take it all with a pinch of salt.

"This is a phase in my life that is more stable, much more solid, because I appreciate my life more than I've ever done," says Hopkins. "When I was younger, at the height of my really self-destructive behaviour, I went through a period where I drank too much and all the rest of it." He has been teetotal since 1975. "I see young successful kids now freak out and I suppose I was like that. The turning point was coming out here to California, and the realisation that I had a wee problem with the old barleycorn and that I could get into a lot of trouble. I thought, 'I don't want to go around being depressed for the rest of my life'. So I stopped and my life changed gradually. I sit back and I don't have cynicism in me any more."

His Zen-like attitude could be mistaken for complacency, but the interesting thing is that it hasn't affected his film work - quite the contrary. Over the years there have been some odd career choices: films like the comedy Bad Company with Chris Rock, Oliver Stone's Alexander, even last year's resounding flop All the King's Men with Sean Penn and Jude Law. But Hopkins is mesmerising in his latest film, the stylish thriller, Fracture, set in Los Angeles. He plays a brilliant, unhinged, scientist who discovers that his wife is having an affair and plans her cold-blooded murder. There are obvious similarities between his Fracture character, Ted Crawford, and the serial killer Hannibal Lecter, who he portrayed in The Silence Of The Lambs, which led to his first and only Oscar. Both are Machiavellian, amoral and deliciously entertaining. "Fracture is a really good film - perhaps one of my best," he says. "I play a man who kills his own wife, but it's not Hannibal Lecter, even though there are similarities. The cop who arrests him is the man who his wife has been seeing, and it's a revenge thing. It was certainly one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had on a movie in a long time," he says. "The part was very well written. Crawford is like Iago; he's got cards hidden up his sleeve. It's a smart, sophisticated script and you don't get many of those today. Being asked to participate in the film was a stroke of luck."

If Hopkins were to be believed, his entire career is based on good fortune rather than any intrinsic talent. "Most of it was luck. I've never really considered myself as a great actor at all. I look at my contemporaries in the London theatre and they're much more skilled than me; people like Judi Dench. I'm just a kind of a fluke," he says with a shrug. He began his career on stage, was Laurence Olivier's understudy in Strindberg's The Dance Of Death, made a huge impression and went on to star in numerous theatre productions as an actor with Olivier at the National Theatre, but claims he never enjoyed it as much as movies. "There was nothing wrong with theatre, it was OK. Laurence Olivier was electrifying. I admired [John] Gielgud and [Ian] Richardson and [Paul] Scofield - all those people - but I didn't have the tenacity some of those people had. I got bored very quickly." He made his film debut in The Lion in Winter with Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole 40 years ago, and turned his back on the theatre altogether in the late Eighties. "I don't look back really at all. I don't even go to the movies any more. I can't sit through them," he says, "although I did like The Queen. I actually sent Helen Mirren a fan letter." He is half-hearted about discussing any of his own performances. I ask him about his wonderfully restrained role as the repressed English butler in his Oscar-nominated performance in The Remains of the Day. "Yes I enjoyed that, working with Emma Thompson. I didn't really act a lot in that.

"I loved doing Shadowlands - I had great fun doing that," he says, referring to the poignant Richard Attenborough film in which he portrayed CS Lewis. I remind him that the film-maker, who also directed Hopkins in Magic, raves about his talent, saying: "He has an extraordinary ability to make you believe that, when he says a line, it's the very first time he's ever said it." "Oh, that's very kind," he says brushing off the praise, as usual.

Despite his long absence from Britain, Hopkins is widely regarded as one of the finest British actors. "Oh I don't know about that," he sighs, "it's no big deal. I suppose acting is something I can do quite easily and I enjoy teaching. I sometimes give classes here in Santa Monica, but it's so unimportant. Spencer Tracy once said to Laurence Olivier: 'Who do you think they think you are?' And he was right. If I stopped acting tomorrow the world would not stop."

Ask Hopkins anything about his "craft" or "career", and there is a distinct irritation. He dislikes both words, refuses to be drawn into any analysis of his technique and is dismissive of method acting. "For me, it just bogs me down, I'm too lazy, I'm not an academic. De Niro became a taxi driver, didn't he, when did Taxi Driver? I suppose that's good. I'm not interested in any of that stuff. I think there's too much acting, do you know what I mean? Over-exerting, putting on disguises and funny noses. Spencer Tracy was a much more realistic actor, I'm more like that, I don't like doing different accents." What about his Oscar-nominated role as Nixon in the Oliver Stone film? "Well, that was a bit of a stretch of the imagination," he says, shaking his head. "I didn't want to do it, I said, 'no'. Oliver Stone is a great director, though, and he put the pressure on."

There is one film that the actor is thrilled to discuss: Slipstream, out later this year, which he wrote and directed, also composing the music. When it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January, reviews were mixed; The Hollywood Reporter called it "amusing cinematic buffoonery", but Hopkins seems immune to criticism.

"I just wrote it for fun, that's all. It was my wife's idea. She said: 'Why don't you write a script?', so I wrote a script. It's a kind of fantasy and I had no idea what was going to happen. I still don't know what it's about. But I finished the script and I thought: 'This is really good.' It's free association, or as they say over here 'non-linear', and, anyway, I sent it to [Steven] Spielberg, he read it and said: 'It's a really good script. But you'll have a hard time marketing it.' It's really about a movie within a movie, it flips through time and goes backwards and I think it's a lighthearted poke at the whole acting profession and life itself - it just says, 'don't take everything so damn seriously'."

Hopkins stars along with Christian Slater and Fionnula Flanagan. "I play the writer who wrote the script," says Hopkins, who also cast his 49-year-old wife in one of the leading roles. Was that a case of blatant nepotism? "No, she was an actress many years ago. I said: 'There's a part for you in it if you want.' She said: 'Oh, I can't do it.' I said: 'Have a go, I can always fire you if you're no good.'" He chuckles. "She hadn't acted for years and she did really well. She jumped into the deep end of the pool and she helped me produce it."

He lights up when he mentions Arroyave. He will not, however, discuss his long marriage to Jenni Lynton, a former production assistant (they divorced in 2002), his brief first marriage to Petronella Barker, or his relationship with their daughter, Hopkins' only child, the actress and musician Abigail Hopkins, now 38, who lives in London. He doesn't welcome personal questions, but frequently brings his current wife into the conversation and he does say that the marriage has brought him stability and a sense of peace that he has never experienced before. "I've got a relationship I enjoy. We have a good life, a lot of fun. We seem to have a very good rhythm."

"Doing the art was my wife's idea. She encouraged me to start painting," says Hopkins, who is currently far more passionate about art than acting. "We are involved in a business and the proceeds of the paintings go charity and we are also designing T-shirts. I had an exhibition of my work down in San Antonio in Texas and I have another one in Vegas this month. I don't know how to paint," he says, "but I like to paint: abstracts, landscapes and all that stuff. People pay a lot of money for them, I don't know why," he says with a bemused expression. "They love the colour, I think. I use very vivid colours. I have to have 10 done for the exhibition, so I'm going back home this afternoon after we've finished talking and I'll paint for the rest of the day.

"My music occupies me when I'm not painting," he continues (Hopkins attended the College of Music and Drama in Cardiff in 1955, originally intending to pursue a career in music). "I've always played the piano and wanted to be a musician, and now I have the time to do it," he says. "I enjoyed writing the music for my movie and I wrote the whole score in 10 days."

Hopkins looks at his watch and expresses concern because he has parked his car round the corner on a meter and the time has expired . "You can walk with me to the car if you like," he suggests, and continues to chat as we make our way along Wilshire Boulevard. "You know, the important thing is to break all the rules and the freedom is to not have any rules," he says. "I'm composing music but I'm not academically trained and it's the same with painting. I just go to my studio, I've got a palette of paints and I just spread them on the canvas. I paint and I make music by not caring, that's the best way," he says, turning to me as we reach his Prius. "What do you want to do? Write a novel? Well, just write it," he instructs me with a smile. "Easy. No big deal, don't think about it. I don't give a damn what people think."

He grins. "I've been through the years and come to the grand age of 69, and that's the conclusion I've come to. I don't know what else there is to do. You might as well do what you want and enjoy it because who knows when it'll end?" And with that, the actor is off, driving north along the Pacific Coast Highway for an afternoon of painting at home in Malibu.

'Fractured' opens today