Anthony Hopkins was in great spirits at a party after the premiere of "The Edge" during the Toronto International Film Festival. The movie, in which he and Alec Baldwin play big-city types forced to survive in the wilderness, went over well - particularly the part where Hopkins psychs himself up to spear a bear by chanting, "I'm going to kill the (expletive)."
In the mood to celebrate, Hopkins, whom everyone calls Tony though he's been knighted and is officially a "sir," pulled an expensive cigar out of his jacket pocket. He took a puff, then table-hopped with the cigar in hand as if it were a prop."I like a cigar now and then - it's the only vice I have left," he says over lox and bagels in his hotel room the next morning. "But I know if I have five of them, I'm going to do damage to my health, so I just have a couple of draws. I waste a lot more cigars than I smoke."
By practicing this kind of moderation and using "a little bit of common sense," Hopkins, 59, has learned to control his self-described "compulsive, neurotic and addictive" personality.
"I used to do everything in excess. I drank until I fell over. I couldn't stop with one like a normal person," he says, staring off at a distant point. "I still have a tendency to be compulsive, but not to such a degree. Now I can have a laugh about it."
It was no laughing matter in 1976 when Hopkins woke up in a motel room in Phoenix, Ariz., and didn't know how he had gotten there. That was when he made up his mind to give up alcohol.
Hopkins says he hasn't had a drink since. "Some miracle happened. I don't even think about it now. It doesn't bother me to be around people who are drinking. I'm just so glad I don't do it anymore, because my body was almost completely ruled by it."
There's nothing Hopkins would rather do than make movies, and since winning an Oscar in 1992 as a cannibalistic serial killer in "The Silence of the Lambs," he's had plenty of opportunities.
"I've had a wonderful resurgence in work. I love working - I love all of it, going to festivals, being interviewed. I don't want to stop. To sit still for long would be death for me."
Director Lee Tamahori says he was so keen to have Hopkins play the billionaire in "The Edge" that "I forgot in a minute that the part was written to be a blue-blooded Yankee." Both Tamahori and screenwriter David Mamet agreed that the character could just as well be a fabulously rich Englishman.
Although Hopkins has played several Americans - including two presidents, Richard Nixon in "Nixon" and John Quincy Adams in the upcoming "Amistad" - "I'm not really that comfortable with American accents. The British rhythm is much faster than the American way of speaking."
Shooting "The Edge" in the Canadian Rockies, Hopkins had to tackle something equally foreign: the outdoors. He had never spent any time in the woods or been up against the dangers presented by Mother Nature. Hopkins had never seen a bear until he had to confront one in the movie.
"It was a trained bear, so it wasn't scary," he recalls. "You feel a sense of respect for a great animal like that. He's been trained as an actor. They train him to change expressions."
The day Hopkins was supposed to confront the animal, he felt strong enough to actually do it. Through the early filming, he had been in a great deal of pain from a herniated disc but was reluctant to do anything about it because of the cost of stopping production.
"I finally came to a point where I said, `I can't do anymore.' I went in and had the surgery and was back on the set two days later. The next day I had the scene where I say, `I'm going to kill the bear.' I was really feeling tremendous that day because I'd been released from the pain. I felt almost reborn."
Hopkins is known for being something of a loner on the set. Although very generous with other actors - Elle Macpherson, who plays his wife in "The Edge," says he was constantly teaching her things about acting - when the day is over, he retires to his room.
"I like to be on my own when I finish working," he explains. "I don't like to have to go to dinner with everyone. When you spend all day with actors you don't want to be with them at night. It's not an anti-social thing."
Hopkins got his start on the stage, but that's somewhere he's not on his way back to. In his 20s, he was an understudy for Laurence Olivier, and when Hopkins started appearing at the National Theater, he was called the next Olivier.
But when Hopkins returned to the London stage in the '80s in "Pravda," in which he played a Rupert Murdoch kind of character, and in "Antony and Cleopatra," he got burned out.
"I will never go back to the stage, categorically never. It's boring and repetitious. `Antony and Cleopatra' finished me. It burned out any desire to be significant or anything like that. I've done all that stuff. I wanted to be a great stage actor, but all my desire for that is gone. I don't even go to the theater anymore."
Acting on the stage every night is "just a lot of work," he says. But what about acting in films?
"Oh that's easy," he says. "Dead easy."