Sir Anthony Hopkins: I can't take credit for my success

He tells me he hates that we are living in a world where “people are cruel to each other” because of the politics of the last 15 years, things along the lines of Brexit – he regards both sides of the argument in the UK as hopeless – and a lack of respect for other opinions.

It’s his wife Stella, he explains, who brings insight and a broader, sometimes spiritual perspective, into his life.

They met in 1972 and have been together for nearly 50 years. He’d just finished a day’s shooting on a film called War and Peace where he played Pierre. He arrived home, watched Match of the Day, had a baked potato for supper and a large vodka.

But the course of his life was about to change when he visited a therapist who told him: “All you have is a big black hole inside you. If you don’t fill it with life, it will kill you.”

It made him listen. The couple moved to a ranch in Taos, a small town in New Mexico, where he could play the piano and paint watercolours. Among those he knows there are the late Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson and others from the 1970s and ’80s LA world.

For Sir Anthony, it was a new start. “I remember when the craving went. Just like that,” he says, snapping his fingers.

One of his favourite films, The Elephant Man got him thinking about having “a view beyond… the desire for fame and fortune… we’re at our happiest when we’re doing something for others rather than something self-absorbed. I’m just truly grateful.”