Anthony Hopkins was doing the most relatable thing when he won the Oscar for Best Actor on Sunday. He was asleep in bed.
Hopkins won the Best Actor trophy for ‘The Father’ at the 93rd Academy Awards, beating out frontrunner Chadwick Boseman in one of the biggest upsets of the night with many expecting the late actor to win the award posthumously for ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’.
Oblivious to any of this, Hopkins, who is currently in Wales, was asleep at the time when the name was announced by Joaquin Phoenix, who won the Best Actor trophy the previous year for ‘Joker’. The news was later relayed to Hopkins by his agent over the phone.
“Tony was in Wales, where he grew up, and he was asleep at 4 in the morning when I woke him up to tell him the news,” Hopkins’ agent Jeremy Barber told People. “He was so happy and so grateful.”
Hopkins also won the accolade of being the oldest actor to win this trophy at age 83.
In a video message, Hopkins later thanked the Academy and paid tribute to Boseman as well. “Here I am in my homeland in Wales. At 83 years of age, I did not expect to get this award, I really did not. I am very grateful to the Academy,” Hopkins is seen saying in the video. “I want to pay tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who was taken from us far too early. I really did not expect this, so I feel very privileged and honoured.”
The actor also thanked ‘The Father’ director Florian Zeller, his wife and his family among others.
This is Hopkins’ second Oscar, with his first awarded in 1992 for his turn as Hannibal Lecter in ‘The Silence of The Lambs’.
In ‘The Father’, Hopkins plays an ageing man struggling with dementia as his daughter (Oscar winner Olivia Colman) moves in to take care of him.
