By Nick Churchill

Anthony Hopkins was in disarmingly modest mood as he spoke about returning to play Hannibal Lecter, the role that earned him an Oscar ten years ago

When asked how he created one of the most striking and frightening character ever to grace a cinema screen, he said simply that he just learned the lines and put the clothes on, leaving the rest in the skilled hands of the other actors and the film-makers – in this case British director Ridley Scott (pictured below with Hopkins).

“My method is fairly simple,” he says. “I know how to play Lecter, I have a feel for him. It’s a very simple process. Say, for example, the day unit arrives at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, one of the most beautiful cities in the world with such a bloodstained history and yet with the great art of Michaelangelo. You’re already there, you don’t have to do anything. You put the clothes on, the funny hat or whatever, and there’s Ridley waiting and in comes this great actor Giancarlo Gianinni as Inspector Pazzi.

"The actor’s job is relatively easy fitting into all that. It’s there, you don’t have to sweat it. It’s easy.”

The ease he speaks so freely about is what continues to attract him to screen acting. Some reports last year said he was about to retire (“I meant it as a joke and of course I should have kept my big mouth shut.”) but he does enjoy the good life and has lived in Los Angeles for ten years, taking up dual citizenship this year. Not for Sir Anthony the thrill of the theatre crowd. Far from it

“I enjoyed it but I don’t have the discipline or the tenacity for it. I do admire Judi Dench and Ian McKellen and all those wonderful actors, but I’m afraid I don’t have the character

“I’m a bit of a Philistine. I like being a beach bum in Malibu. I’m not going in night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons in the Waterloo Road. They send me into suicidal depression. There’s something rather sad about it

“The reason is, I think that actors are pathetic, we need approval and love all the time, so if you see two empty seats or an empty balcony during the tube strike that’s it. I’d rather save myself that terrible despair.” The vague controversy and rumour mill that surrounded the making of Hannibal didn’t pass Anthony Hopkins by either. With Silence of the Lambs in the first flush of success, people were already talking about a sequel. When news broke that author Thomas Harris was writing one, speculation started immediately. It took ten years to be delivered

Jonathan Demme, Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins all read playwright David Mamet’s script. They agreed to changes, then Demme walked away, followed by Foster. Hopkins was convinced of the project after reading re-written script (by Schindler’s List writer Steve Zaillian) and seeing Ridley Scott step into the director’s chair. The icing on the cake was the signing of Julianne Moore to play Clarice

And Anthony Hopkins is Hannibal Lecter. When the notoriously reclusive Thomas Harris finally spoke to Hopkins he couldn’t wait to get off the phone as he could only see the image of Lecter at the end of the phone

“I am interested in the appeal of a character like Lecter, and without getting too heavy about it I think we all like the bogey man, we’re fascinated by the dark shadowy characters in literature: Iago, Phantom of the Opera, Richard III, notorious villains. Hannibal is the Phantom of the Opera,” he says

To the miner’s sons and daughters Hopkins grew up alongside in Port Talbot, he must seem a mythical figure himself. Expansive and charming to the end, by his own admission his career has been marked by determination – and luck

“Yes, everything has happened beyond my wildest dreams, I still can’t believe that what’s happened to me has happened to me. It’s luck, good fortune, destiny, whatever,” he says, candidly

“Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, and got his autograph and was walking down the hill afterwards and Richard passed in his car and his wife waved to me and I can remember thinking ‘I want to get out of here, I want to become he has become’

“Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because was so limited as a child at school and felt so bereft and lonely. I wasn’t very bright at school. I thought that becoming an actor would do the trick for me, but it’s not quite like that. But it’s been a terrific life and I’ve done everything I wanted to do. It’s been wonderful."

“I am interested in the appeal of a character like Lecter, and without getting too heavy about it I think we all like the bogey man, we’re fascinated by the dark shadowy characters in literature: Iago, Phantom of the Opera, Richard III, notorious villains. Hannibal is the Phantom of the Opera,” he says.