Sir Anthony Hopkins was born in Margam, Port Talbot, Wales as the son of Muriel Anne and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a baker. From his mother's side he is the descendant of the famous English poet William Butler Yeats. Anthony Hopkins was however influenced and encouraged to become an actor by the Welsh compatriot Richard Burton, with whom he had a brief interaction only at the age of 15. With that end in view he became highly interested to pursue a career in the field of acting, and there he enrolled himself at the Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, Wales. From there Anthony Hopkins graduated in 1957 and after a two year spell in the Army, he moved to London where he got trained at the RADA. In the year 1965 his life turned towards a new direction, as he after several years in repertory was spotted by Sir Laurence Oliver, who invited him to join the illustrious Royal National Theatre. The level of confidence of Sir Laurence Oliver on this new discovery got revealed when Olivier was struck with appendicitis during a production of The Dance of Death by August Strindberg. Olivier later noted in his memoir, Confessions of an Actor, that, "A new young actor in the company of exceptional promise named Anthony Hopkins was understudying me and walked away with the part of Edgar like a cat with a mouse between its teeth". However, despite his succees at the National, Anthony soon became tired of repeating the same roles rightly and yearned to be in movies, until in 1968 when he received his break in The Lion in Winter, and played the role of Richard I, in conjunction with the the famous Jame Bond star of the future Timothy Dalton, here in the role of Philip II of France. He made his small-screen debut in a 1967 BBC broadcast of A Flea in Her Ear. He has since gone on to enjoy a long career, winning many plaudits and awards for his performances. To venerate Anthony Hopkins he was made a Commander of the British Empire or CBE in 1987, and a Knight Bachelor in 1993. In the year 1996, Anthony Hopkins was awarded an honorary fellowship from the University of Wales, Lampeter. It has also been learnt that Hopkins himself has stated that his role as Burt Munro, whom he portrayed in his 2005 film The World's Fastest Indian, was his favourite. He also asserted that Munro was the easiest role that he had ever played because both men have a similar outlook on life. In the year 2006, Hopkins was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. Demille Award, as a mark for lifetime achievement.

In the realm of the acting world, Anthony Hopkins is renowned for his dedication and firm preparation for roles. He has confessed in interviews that once he has committed to a project, he will go over his lines as many times as is needed (sometimes upwards of 200, if not more!) until the lines sound natural to him. Why? The chief reason being, so that he can "do it without thinking". This leads to an almost casual style of delivery that remain in contradiction with the amount of groundwork done beforehand. While it can allow for some careful improvisation, it has also brought him into conflict with the occasional director who departs from the script, or demands what the actor views as an excessive number of takes. Hopkins has also stated that after he is finished with a scene, he simply forgets the lines, not remembering them later on. This is unlike other actors who in general remember their lines from a film even years later. Truly, Sir Anthony Hopkins deserves a strong veneration from the international conmmunity of audience!