A KNIGHT'S MOVES SIR ANTHONY HOPKINS HAS BEEN MAKING FILMS FOR NEARLY 40 YEARS - AND NOW HE'S SHARING HIS STRATEGIES WITH UCLA STUDENTS.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

How do you ignore your past when it keeps popping up on reruns? Or when people are forever coming up to you with wiseacre remarks about ``fava beans and a nice Chianti''?

If you're Sir Anthony Hopkins, you turn off the TV, accept the award, smile and go about your business: the next movie, the next acting seminar, the next endeavor. ``I think, as you get older, I look back on my life, but I don't look back on work,'' says Hopkins. ``I have had a great time in this business, and it's been wonderful, given me a good life.''

It's not as though he's on the verge of retirement. He appears in ``Proof,'' the film adaptation of David Auburn's play, and will be seen in ``The World's Fastest Indian,'' opening on Feb. 3.

During Monday night's ceremony at the Golden Globe Awards, Hopkins - Tony to his friends - will be honored with the Cecil B. De Mille award for ``outstanding contribution to the entertainment field.'' He'll listen as colleagues sing his praises and watch clips from a nearly 40-year film career that has seen him play English royalty and butlers, a surrealist painter, the creator of Narnia, a vampire hunter, Zorro, Hitler and a couple of American presidents.

The cinematic trip down memory lane may trigger a cascade of memories for Hopkins. It has in the past.

``Sometimes, out of curiosity, I'll see something on television that I did 30 years ago and I'll think, 'Isn't that weird. That was me. That was me then.' It's a whole different time, and it's like looking at a different person,'' says Hopkins, 68.

``My first movie, 'The Lion in Winter,' was on a few months ago. At the time, my personal life was in shreds. I was involved in my first marriage, and it was a living hell for various reasons,'' he continues. ``I was crazy. I saw that film a few months ago, and I thought, 'Oh my God. Another time, another place.' It's an interesting document of my life. But I'm not preoccupied with the past, which is a kind of blessing in a way.''

It was a willingness to lay aside less-than-stellar memories that led Hopkins to reteam with director Roger Donaldson to make ``The World's Fastest Indian,'' 20 years after their first cinematic collaboration was anything but smooth sailing.

The film was a 1984 adaptation of ``Mutiny on the Bounty'' (titled ``The Bounty'') that had Hopkins playing the vicious Capt. Bligh opposite Mel Gibson's Fletcher Christian. ``We had our little skirmishes on that one,'' remembers Hopkins, referring to Donaldson. ``When you're younger, you have so many ideas.''

Donaldson doesn't dispute Hopkins' account, although he also recalls a conversation during which the director tried to calm his star with the assurance, ``We're just making a movie here,'' only to have Hopkins come back with ``You think I'm crazy, don't you? You should have seen me when I played Hitler.''

``('The Bounty') was quite a tempestuous sort of tough movie to make,'' says Donaldson. ``Since then, I've realized what it takes to pull those sort of very demanding parts out of your hat. You can't do that without going to that place, and I think Tony has maybe mellowed a bit as well. We had a damned good time making this one.''

Their latest film, the gentle independent film ``The World's Fastest Indian,'' has Hopkins playing Burt Munro, a quirky Kiwi speed freak who, in 1962, set a land speed record racing an Indian motorcycle at Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Burt, also the subject of Donaldson's 1972 documentary, ``Offerings to the God of Speed,'' is about as distant from Bligh as a person could possibly get.

Which was precisely the character's appeal. If he doesn't necessarily tap into Burt Munro's need for speed, Hopkins can certainly identify with a character who lives in a shed, collects rainwater off his roof and doesn't sweat life's little mishaps.

``We have, I think, the same philosophy in life: ``Get on with it. Don't waste time analyzing it all,'' says Hopkins who, while in the military, fell off an Indian, and prior to the film, hadn't been on a bike since. ``It's a complete change of pace for me from playing all those strange uptight characters I play.''

Hopkins' list of credits bears out this last statement. His four Oscar nominations were earned for playing an intensely bottled-up manservant (``The Remains of the Day,'' 1993), the anything-but-relaxed President Nixon (``Nixon,'' 1995), President John Quincy Adams dealing with a bloody slave mutiny (``Amistad,'' 1997) and, of course, the cannibalistic Dr. Hannibal Lecter in ``The Silence of the Lambs'' (for which he won the 1992 best actor Oscar). In ``Proof,'' he plays a mad math genius.

It's a clearly mellow Hopkins who greets an interviewer in the suite of a Beverly Hills hotel. His gray hair (his head was shaved while shooting Steven Zaillian's ``All the King's Men'') flows freely. His voice is a room-temperature purr. Yes, he's pleased with ``Indian'' (which had a brief awards qualifying run in December). Ditto the De Mille award.

``I don't want to say thanks and take an hour to do it. That's what people do sometimes,'' he says.

Barbara Boyle, who chairs UCLA's Department of Film, Television and Digital Media, calls Hopkins ``the most modest, unassuming man. It's as if he doesn't even recognize his talent and his standing in the industry,'' says Boyle, who hired Hopkins to teach a series of acting and directing seminars at UCLA. ``He just doesn't think that way.''

When she came to UCLA in the spring of 2003, Boyle, who had produced Hopkins' 1999 film ``Instinct,'' asked the actor to screen one of his films and hold a Q&A session afterward. Hopkins chose ``The Remains of the Day,'' and the screening drew 300 students.

That led to Hopkins teaching seminars in 2004 and 2005 and delivering the keynote address at the university's commencement speech last June. He has also been hired as the Regents Lecturer for the department, and - schedule permitting - will return to the classroom in the spring.

Get Hopkins talking about the students and he really comes alive, although he classifies his work at UCLA less as instruction and more as conversation and scene work.

Meaning, he says, that a group of students sees Anthony Hopkins walk into their classroom, and introduce himself. He'll also set up a camera and invite students to act out a scene or a monologue, which he'll later help them break down.

``I tell them a little bit about myself and I say, 'OK, I'm not here to teach you anything, but if you want to ask me questions ...' And they ask me questions,'' says Hopkins.

Such as?

`` 'How do you prepare? How do you make that choice in that movie?' I usually say, 'I tell you the truth. I just learn my lines, show up and do it.' I go over it aloud. It's fantastic. All the information they need is there in the text. If you don't do that, basically it's like going into a wardrobe and saying, 'I'll wear this hat and wear those gloves and wear those shoes.' There no substance inside. You have to have the body, which is the text, the whole creation.''

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) TO SIR, WITH LOVE

Anthony Hopkins reflects on the long and distinguished road to his special Golden Globe

Carlo Allegri/Getty Images

(2) no caption (Anthony Hopkins)

(3) Hopkins won the 1992 best actor for his role as the cannibalistic Dr. Hannibal Lecter in ``The Silence of the Lambs,'' which co-starred Jodie Foster.