Anthony Hopkins isn't lying on a couch, but he might as well be.
In an animated Zoom conversation filled with personal confessions (his parents' doubts fueled his drive) and whimsical impressions (a wickedly spot-on Katharine Hepburn), the two-time Oscar winner analyzes himself in a fashion that would please Sigmund Freud, who he vividly embodies in "Freud's Last Session" (in theaters nationwide Friday).
"How did my life happen? Honestly, I don't know," says Hopkins, whose elfin demeanor belies his 86 years. "I didn't arrange any of it. I didn't have the brains or the wherewithal, I couldn't boil an egg. How did this happen? And so we go back to God."
God plays a leading role in "Freud's Last Session," which finds the eminent neurologist and psychoanalyst debating the existence of a supreme being with Oxford professor and author C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode), whose Christian faith found expression in works such as "The Chronicles of Narnia."
The fictional meeting of these minds started as a book ("The Question of God") and led to a 2010 off-Broadway hit ("Freud's Last Session"). The year is 1939: Freud's health is failing, Europe is on the brink of war, and Lewis has come to challenge Freud on his agnosticism.
While Hopkins says he steeped himself in Freud's works for the role, he considers himself more a follower of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who believed that a personal and collective human unconscious combine to guide a life's journey.
For Hopkins, whose peerless career includes six Oscar nominations and two best actor wins (for "The Silence of the Lambs" and "The Father"), an unconscious force, in fact, took over one day in 1955.
He was 18 and, in the eyes of his parents, a failure. His grades were among the worst in the class.
"I remember standing in a room with my parents, behind our bake shop in Port Talbot, South Wales, and it wasn’t out of anger, but I said, 'One day I will show you, both of you,' " Hopkins says, leaning forward. "And my father stopped in his tracks, and he said, 'I hope you do,' and he threw my school report (card) in the fire. And my mother said, 'I’m sure you will.' "
Hopkins pauses but doesn't allow himself a self-satisfied smile. He's still mystified by what happened next.
"Within 10 years, I was understudying Laurence Olivier and eventually went on for him at the National Theatre. And two years later, Peter O’Toole was playing my father" in the 1968 movie "The Lion in Winter," he says.
"Jung would call it the superconscious. Freud would have another answer, and C.S. Lewis would say that’s God. My theory is that some power within me has brought me here. When I said that to my father, I switched on a motor that’s within all of us. I tapped into some voice that said, 'Fasten your seat belts, here we go.' "
To attempt a recap of Hopkins' acting accomplishments is to risk demolishing the egos of lesser thespians. He has played popes and serial killers with equal relish, a dedicated surgeon in "The Elephant Man" and a stately butler in "Remains of the Day," excelled on the biggest of stages and all sizes of screens.
Ask him how he amassed such an enviable resume, and he says it's simply down to hard work.
"As the years go by, the tools of experience get sharper and cleaner, more precise, but I still prepare quite a bit," he says. "When we have a table read with other actors, I make sure I set the goal high. I don't mean to show off, but I say to them, know your lines, know your stuff. I worked with Katharine Hepburn (in 'The Lion in Winter') and she said to me ..."
Suddenly, Hopkins affects the iconic actress' shaky monotone: "Just speak the lines, don’t act. Do what (Humphrey) Bogart did, don’t act. Just speak your lines.'
"So, yes, I took that to heart," he says. "But when I say, 'I'm an actor,' I think, what a stupid thing to do, really. I mean, I go somewhere, get changed, say my lines, change, go home, then come back and do it again. What a ridiculous way to make a living. But I love it so much, and maybe sometimes I’m saying something about our common humanity that makes it all worth it."
Hopkins' total transformation into the seminal Austrian psychoanalyst in "Freud's Last Session" makes it easy to believe you're present during a real debate over the most elusive of mysteries: faith. This is just how Hopkins wants it; he asks not that you fall on one side but rather be open to views you're tempted to dismiss.
"Because in the end, we know only that we know nothing, that's what Socrates said," Hopkins says. "One day we die, who knows what happens, maybe it’s just cosmic dust. For now, I wake up, I'm alive, they give me work and it keeps me out of trouble and off the streets."
Hopkins laughs. "You have to have a sense of humor about it all. At 86, I’m pondering, well, that’s a heavy word, but I’m aware of my mortality. I’d like to go for another 60 years, but I’m conscious of something in me that comforts me, telling me that this is but a dream."
A dream career, to be sure. Did he ever have a moment of reconciliation with his skeptical parents?
"In the 1970s, my parents came to New York to see me in a play, and when my father arrived, he burst into tears and said, 'How did you do it?' " says Hopkins. "I said, I don't know."
"Truly, there's no answer as to how. I'm still that little boy," he says. "In fact, I carry a photo of myself at age 4, used to be in my wallet, now it’s in my phone, and I look at that photo and say, 'We did OK, kid.' "