In 1992, Francis Ford Coppola directed Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring Gary Oldman because the alluring vampire and Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, his stake-toting nemesis. On the time, Hopkins was contemporary off his Oscar-winning efficiency as one other legendary monster: Dr. Hannibal Lecter in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs—however he was a Dracula fan going again many years. In his new memoir, We Did OK, Child, Hopkins seems again at his lengthy profession, together with the function that will launch a thousand Halloween costumes and fava bean jokes.
A e book excerpt printed by the British newspaper the Occasions takes on a interval in Hopkins’ profession that every one horror followers are inquisitive about: when he got here aboard Jonathan Demme’s serial-killer thriller and crafted his indelible tackle Lecter. He solely learn 15 pages of the script earlier than deciding it was the most effective half he’d ever encountered and needed to cease studying as a result of he didn’t wish to face the frustration if he wasn’t solid.
Hopkins was solid, after all, and within the excerpt he writes, “I instinctively sensed find out how to play Hannibal. I’ve the satan in me. All of us have the satan in us. I do know what scares individuals.”
He remembers avoiding his co-star and fellow Oscar winner Jodie Foster throughout manufacturing—in service of the odd dynamic between their characters—although he writes that they’re nice buddies now. On the time, although, she was a bit afraid of him, he says.
“On the day of the primary desk studying … I used to be as scary as I might be. You might have heard a pin drop within the room. A few seconds after I began to talk as Lecter, I noticed Jodie develop tense,” he wrote.
And right here’s the place Dracula got here in: “I additionally known as on my childhood impersonations of Bela Lugosi at boarding college. As a child, I went to see him in Dracula. That had been one of many first large books I ever learn. Within the e book, the protagonist Jonathan Harker nicks himself with a razor and senses Dracula’s rapt consideration. The sound I imagined Dracula made in that second, thirsting for Harker’s blood, was a really explicit mixture of hissing and slurping.”
“That’s the place I acquired the sound I made with my lips as Hannibal, the one which will get imitated a lot.”
The excerpt ends after he wins the Oscar for Greatest Actor, so we don’t get any insights into whether or not or not he gave Oldman any tips on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We Did OK, Child is accessible now.
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