ANTHONY HOPKINS: At 88, the Margam-born star is playing the villain again

Sir Anthony Hopkins is to play the man who built a police state, in a science fiction thriller called 2048.

The Margam-born actor, 88, takes the role of Bryant, described as the brilliant and ruthless architect of a regime that controls almost every part of people’s lives.

The film is set in a future where a dying planet has driven the last of humanity underground.

Below the surface, a body called the Collective runs everything, and has wiped out any memory of the world above.

The story follows Wesley, an ordinary worker whose life comes apart when he falls in with a hidden resistance. As he starts digging for the truth, he attracts Bryant’s attention.

Bryant keeps his grip through surveillance, manipulation and psychological terror.

Hopkins said the film grew out of conversations with the director after their last one together.

“There were a number of suggestions and ideas briefly talked about, and then, suddenly, the screenplay 2048 emerged from those conversations,” he said.

“The story is complex and fascinating: it taps into the mysterious contradictions that are hidden within human nature, our capacity for both extraordinary creative achievement and compassion, and the terrible mystery of cruelty.”

Of the man he will play, he said: “Bryant is an equally complex character, intelligent, restrained and frightening in the absolute conviction with which he views the world.”

The director is Timothy Woodward Jr, who has just worked with Hopkins on Eyes In The Trees, a reimagining of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau with Hopkins as a geneticist whose funding is pulled. It is in post-production.

“Working with Anthony again is a dream come true,” Woodward said. “He brings such depth, intelligence and quiet intensity to every role, which makes him perfect for Bryant.”

“At its core, 2048 is a story about freedom, control and one man’s fight to discover the truth.”

Sean Ryan wrote the screenplay. Natalie Burn is producing through Born To Burn Films with Volodymyr Artemenko of Eastern Film Investment.

“An epic sci-fi story set in a post-apocalyptic world is a real treat for audiences,” Burn said, “but the film also has a depth and a message that I believe is extremely important for modern society to hear.”

Top Film Distribution is selling it worldwide at the Toronto festival market this week. Deadline reported the casting on Wednesday. More casting is under way, the shoot is planned for Los Angeles, and no release date has been set.

The title invites a comparison the producers will have seen coming. Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 sequel to Ridley Scott’s original, is set a year later, and the Blade Runner world already has a 2048 of its own: one of three short films made to bridge the gap between the two features is called 2048: Nowhere to Run.

The monster he has never quite escaped

He has played this kind of man before, and it made him.

Hopkins won his first Oscar in 1992 for Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, and was made a Freeman of Port Talbot after it.

Thirty-five years on, that performance is still being taken apart. The first stage adaptation of the story reaches Swansea Grand Theatre next February, and John Partridge, who plays Lecter on the tour, found his way into the part by reading how Hopkins built it out of Truman Capote, Katharine Hepburn and the computer HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

His second Oscar came in 2021 for The Father, making him the oldest actor ever to win best actor, at 83.

Margam to Malibu, and still not stopping

He was born in Margam in 1937, the son of a baker, and has said he decided to become an actor after meeting Richard Burton in Port Talbot at the age of 15.

The last year alone would test someone half his age. In July he signed with Decca Classics for Life Is A Dream, an album of pieces written across six decades, drawing on the streets, meadows and mountains around his 1940s Margam home.

In April he began filming A Visit to Grandpa’s in Wales, an adaptation of the Dylan Thomas short story, with Catherine Zeta-Jones joining the cast. Hundreds turned out in Dolgellau to watch.

He also appears in Guy Ritchie’s Wife and Dog, alongside Benedict Cumberbatch, Rosamund Pike and James Norton.

All of it lands as the town makes its case to be the first UK Town of Culture, a bid built on the creative legacy of Little Hollywood, with a mural of Hopkins going up over the summer.

He was knighted in 1993 and has lived in Malibu for years. At 88, he is still signing for new films.