Anthony Hopkins takes possession of ‘The Rite’

Even at a time when improvisation in film is more common than ever, Anthony Hopkins remains a firm believer in following the script.
Sure, he might appear to be tapping into a more malevolent force during the film’s climactic possession scenes, but to play an exorcist in dire need of his own style of spiritual treatment in “The Rite,” Hopkins said he found all the answers he needed by carefully reading his part.
“Oh, I just learned the lines, over and over and over,” Hopkins said during an interview at the Century City Plaza hotel in Los Angeles. “I was in Budapest when we did those scenes, and I had quite a lot of time off ... but I’d spend at least two hours a day or maybe three hours a day, depending on how much work I had to do, going through it systematically, systematically, over and over and over and over. Not performing it, but just going through the lines and thinking.
“And as I’d go through it — it was like varnishing and putting on layers of paint — these ideas started coming to me,” Hopkins said. “The vocal sounds of the man and the peculiar rhythms of the man, of the demon or the devil or spirit or whatever it is. And I knew it was working because (director) Mikael Hafstrom would say, ‘You’re crazy.’ So I just learned them like I had to learn the Latin and the Italian.”
“The Rite” is the supernatural tale about young seminarian Michael Kovak (newcomer Colin O’Donoghue) who, amid a crisis of faith, is sent to Rome to study under the tutelage of Father Lucas Trevant (Hopkins), a renowned and extremely busy exorcist. In the course of treating a pregnant teenager in the throes of demonic possession, Father Lucas begins to show signs that his own spirit may have been compromised.
Hopkins knew there were potential pitfalls to such a role. Having won an Oscar for playing cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs,” he worried the film might invite unwanted comparisons to his most iconic performance.
“I was a little doubtful when I first got the script,” he said. “I thought, ” ‘I don’t want to play another spooky man.’
He said he was reassured after reading the script and learning that “The Rite” did not include “spinning heads or pea soup” in its arsenal of scares. In order to understand the subject more fully, Hopkins read several books on the subject, but when it comes to the understanding the nature of demonic possession and whether it is real, the 73-year-old actor said there are no conclusions to be drawn.
“It’s quite a smart move to gather as much information as you can. So I read quite a bit — I can’t remember how many books I read,” Hopkins said. “And I’m still reading in preparation for the publicity, because I’m going to be asked questions about exorcism and God and the devil and so on and so forth.
“So I put a lot of information in my head so that I have a point of reference, basically to tell you that I know nothing,” he said. “I don’t know anything. And the less smart I think I am, the better I am, because I have no certainty about anything.”
Currently in negotiations to play Alfred Hitchcock in a film about the making of “Psycho,” Hopkins will be seen later this year playing Odin in “Thor.” And while he plays a Norse god instead of a man of the cloth, the process is identical.
” Hopkins said. “It’s all “No, it’s just, ‘Put on the armor and the beard,’ the same. You can’t take it seriously at all. It’s just acting. It’s just simply learning the text, knowing what you’re doing and going in and giving your best.
“But you have to know fundamentally what you’re doing. You have to know the text and use a modicum of intelligence. It doesn’t take a genius IQ to do it; it’s common sense most of the time,” he said. “And if you’ve been doing it long enough — I’ve been doing it 40 years — you have a fairly good knowledge of what to do. It’s not a big deal.”
Travel and accommodations provided by Warner Bros.