Anthony Hopkins Quotes

I was lucky enough to come in at the beginning of the independent film movement, and it's really shaped my life and my career.

I do want to be in mainstream movies that are going to be seen. I suppose it satisfies the showbiz side of me.

In the beginning, it wasn't even a question of deciding I'm going to do independent film and not commercial films - I wasn't being offered any commercial films, and there wasn't an independent scene.

As far as acting in films, there is not much out there that is very interesting to do. The ones that are interesting to me are independent films and they have trouble raising money. With people putting their money into blockbusters, there is not much left for the independents.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.

I like the intimacy of independent films and I like the idea that people aren't being paid necessarily as much money as some one on a studio film.

I grew up thinking there was something called 'independent film,' which I wouldn't necessarily have had access to if there wasn't Sundance.

If you really spend time with movies, it's three years of your life from beginning to end. I started out planting the seed with 'Monster's Ball' about independent cinema and raising money and that whole thing as a producer, and then it becomes easier for me.

I find the stuff that is exciting to me are the films coming out of Taiwan and Iran and France. So I have the feeling I'm not making the films that American distributors want to make.

While more great films are being made every year, it is increasingly difficult to get indies into theaters or on TV.

The traditional Hollywood system is pretty rigid, but the film scene in, say, South Africa is booming with a lot of possibilities. If you have the cameras and reasonable capital, you can put your film in theatres next to 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' A great example of that was Kagiso Lediga's film 'Blitz Patrole.'

The distribution systems and the cinemas have adopted to the blockbusters, and they now get their main income from selling popcorn, and if you don't make a film that sells popcorn, it's very hard to get it out there.

I haven't earned much money through films.

That's what I want to continue to do: really odd films, with interesting filmmakers.

The films that are coming out of SXSW are incredible, and they should get the same bids that films at Sundance are getting.

I grew up on the commercial film format. I have grown up all my life watching films and they have all been mainstream commercial cinema.

When I went to Sundance back in 1998, indie film was all the rage, and Miramax was throwing down five or six million dollars for several films each year. Those were the salad days of indie film, and those days are over. I'm not out there worrying too much about it.

It's not that I don't want to do different films. The non-mainstream stuff that I did started to get successful... But for an industry which runs essentially on money, they do put you in a box.

At times I think I actually hate Hollywood. I have many acquaintances there, but few friends.

I very much enjoy my freedom creatively but I also would love to make one of those big Hollywood films that costs a lot of money and has a lot of people running around with cell phones and all that insanity.

I think it's a total fallacy for people to say, "You couldn't make those old movies today." I think there's more ways to get a movie made today than ever in the history of the entertainment industry. It's a very exciting time to work in movies, if you're a creative person looking to make a very personal, weird vision.

I'd been out of the movies for years, I had had a wonderful stage career, yes, in musicals and so on, but you don't really make any money in the theater.

I think films would get a lot better if people paid leaving the cinema. There's a whole business plan of opening terrible films in hundreds of cinemas and then closing them when the word of mouth gets out.

The feature film has changed a lot. Art houses are gone and people show a certain type of cinema in the big theaters now that, you know, it's not quite really good for me, and if I made a feature film, I was think I'd play in LA and New York for a week, and then go right to television.

The movie industry is full of crazy people who think that they are god.