The following article was featured in the UK's best selling Sunday Newspaper - "The Sunday Times" on January 14th, 2001 and was written by one of the paper's Los Angeles correspondents - John Harlow. It appears here without confirmed permission from the author, but in good faith. All text beyond this point is the copyright of John Harlow.



"Hopkins offered £13m for third bite at Lecter"

The Sunday Times
World News section, January 14th 2001
Written by John Harlow in Los Angeles.



Toast Sir Anthony Hopkins with fava beans and Chianti. He has been offered more than £13.5m to reprise his role as the murderous Dr Hannibal Lecter, a record for a British Actor.

Hopkins, who won an Oscar as the charismatic serial killer in the 1991 film "The Silence of the Lambs" and plays him again in the sequel "Hannibal", to be released next month, is in negotiations to perform the lip-smacking role for a third and final time this summer.

The third film, provisionally called "Red Dragon", will be set seven years before "The Silence of the Lambs", prompting the producer, Dino De Laurentis, to turn to a new computer technology than can add hair to Hopkins and reduce his weight.

If he accepts the part, the technology, called Erasure, will make the 63 year-old actor appear to have returned to his forties, when he achieved fame in films such as "The Bounty" and "The Elephant Man".

Hopkins, who was born in Port Talbot, south Wales, but took American citizenship last April and is currently mayor of the exclusive Los Angeles suburb of Pacific Palisades, is said to be "very interested" in playing Lecter again if the script is right.

The new film, "Hannibal", has been criticised for making his character, hunted by the FBI and another madman - a millionaire played by Gary Oldman - too much of a victim. Hopkins is believed to have had £6.75m in advance for Hannibal and could earn another £3.5m from the film's profits.

To return for Red Dragon, De Laurentis has offered him £12.2m up front and a share of profits that could boost his pay packet beyond £13.5m and project him into Hollywood's most exclusive circle, the "$20m club", whose members receive that sum or more per film.

Leading British actors such as Sir Sean Connery and Sir Michael Caine typically get £8m ($12m) per film and the younger generation, such as Jude Law, are lucky to get £3.5m ($5m). This compares with the £15.25m ($22.5m) Bruce Willis will receive in advance for the new Second World War drama, "Hart's War".

Although Hopkins has portrayed monumental figures such as Richard Nixon, Adolf Hitler and Titus Andronicus, it was Lecter who won him great acclaim - and he loves playing the monster.

He famously improvised the details that brought the psychopath to life on the screen, including the smacking of his lips as he told Clarice Starling, the FBI agent player by Jodie Foster, how he ate a census-taker with beans and red wine.

Recently Hopkins said Lecter was misunderstood. "He is not just a killer: he is the darkness in us all. The new film is a dark romance about obsession - the hatred that Lecter's enemy feels for him and the strange, bizarre love he feels for Clarice. It is a yearning that he has had for Clarice for years. He may eat people, but he has feelings, too."

Hannibal, released on February 9, is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Thomas Harris. The film was delayed because many people, including Hopkins and Foster, disliked the novel's original ending. By the time it was rewritten, Foster was no longer available and her role was taken by Julianne Moore.

By the end of March Hopkins will receive an outline script of the "prequel" inspired by Red Dragon, Harris's 1981 novel which introduced the character of Lecter.

When first filmed as "Manhunter", starring the Scottish actor Brian Cox as Lecter, it took less than £6.75m. But De Laurentis calls Hopkins, with his slicked-back hair and insinuating delivery, the "champion of chills" and believes he can instil fresh life into it. "Hannibal escaped from prison in The Silence of the Lambs and in the new film, Hannibal, you see him at large in Italy, yet the story still feels incomplete." De Laurentis said. "The audience wants to see why, where and by whom Hannibal Lecter was originally caught. This new version has elements of the Red Dragon novel that were not in the first film, so it will feel very new and exciting."

Hopkins, who recently threatened to retire from acting to concentrate on his love of music, poetry and travel, could yet turn the film down. A Los Angeles associate said: "He has done 50 films, but people seem to remember Hannibal best. He does not want to be remembered just for playing madmen, and is picking and choosing his roles much more carefully these days."

"But, again, if they do produce an outstanding and original script there is an awful lot of money on the table."

John Harlow
The Sunday Times