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Anthony Hopkins is setting the record straight.
The actor, 87, shut down rumors that he and his “Silence of the Lambs” co-star, Jodie Foster, were feuding while making the 1991 classic.
“I met Jodie, and she was very nice,” Hopkins recalled while on the “Armchair Expert” podcast. “There’s quotes that Jodie never spoke to me. That’s not true. We were quite friendly. There’s nothing spooky about it. That’s publicly crap.”
In the star’s new book “We Did OK, Kid: A Memoir,” he wrote that he and Foster, 62, mostly stayed away from one until while filming because of their characters.
Hopkins portrayed Hannibal Lecter, a cannibalistic murderer, while the actress played Clarice Starling an FBI agent in training trying to get info out of him about another serial killer. Starling was meant to be intimidated by Lecter.
Hopkins told host Dax Shepard, 50, that Foster was impressed with his performance.
“We did the first reading, and I knew how to play it,” he recounted. “It was the first reading around a table in New York, of all places. So we finished the script and Kenny Utt, one of the producers, says, ‘Holy Moses, Tony, what is that?’ And Jodie said, ‘You’re scary.’”
Hopkins further detailed the moment in his new memoir.
“We just flew right into it,” he penned. “I wanted to show what I could do, so I was as scary as I could be. You could have heard a pin drop in the room. A couple of seconds after I started to speak as Lecter, I saw Jodie grow tense.”
The film took home five Oscars in 1992, with Hopkins landing the award for Best Actor and Foster winning for Best Actress. The project also scored an Oscar for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture.
Hopkins also wrote about having lunch with Foster on the last day of filming.
“Jodie put down her sandwich and said she had to confess something: she’d been scared of me,” he elaborated.
Hopkins added that he felt the same way towards her.
“We had a big hug, and we both admitted to feeling a strange sense of distance during the shoot, due no doubt to the power of that script, which had us playing a cat-and-mouse game,” he continued. “Since then, we’ve always greeted each other with great warmth.”
Hopkins’ podcast appearance comes on the heels of him disputing his wife Stella Arroyave’s belief that he has autism.
“I’m obsessed with numbers. I’m obsessed with detail. I like everything in order. And memorizing,” the “Hannibal” alum told the Sunday Times earlier this month.
“Stella looked it up and she said, ‘You must be Asperger’s,’” he said about his wife of over 20 years.
“I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about,” Hopkins continued. “I don’t even believe it.”
Asperger’s Syndrome now falls under the broader umbrella of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), According to the Cleveland Clinic.
ASD, per the Mayo Clinic, is a condition related to brain development that affects how people see others and socialize with them.
Hopkins went on to share his perspective on mental health labels.
“Well, I guess I’m cynical because it’s all nonsense,” he expressed. “It’s all rubbish. ADHD, OCD, Asperger’s, blah, blah, blah. Oh God, it’s called living.”
“It’s just being a human being, full of tangled webs and mysteries and stuff that’s in us,” Hopkins added. “Full of warts and grime and craziness, it’s the human condition. All these labels. I mean, who cares? But now it’s fashion.”
Hopkins also revealed that he suspects he inherited his late father Richard Hopkins’ mental health problems.
“Oh yes, it crossed my mind that there was something not right with me,” he admitted.
Hopkins shared with the Sunday Times that Laurence Olivier, who helped launch his career, once told him to see a psychiatrist, but he didn’t go.
Hopkins, meanwhile, did see a therapist “briefly” at one point.
“He kept saying, ‘Let’s go back ’ And I’d just go, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ So boring,’” Hopkins reflected, noting that he quit the session after learning his therapist had been married three times.