Hopkins in Color

It may be news to many, but in addition to creating such larger-than-life characters as The Silence of the Lambs’Hannibal Lecter and Howards End’s Henry Wilcox (not to mention, once upon a time, the titular protagonist in James Ivory’s Surviving Picasso), Welsh thespian Sir Anthony Hopkins has been engaged in a different kind of artistry, mounting a parallel career as a painter. Starting tomorrow, fifty of his works will go on public display at London’s Gallery 27 in Mayfair, the first British exhibition of his work; on March 3, they will move to the Dome in Edinburgh for four days. You can get a taste of his colorful creations with this slide show at BBC.com, featuring six of his landscape and abstract paintings. “I do it for sheer pleasure,” Hopkins has said. “It’s done wonders for my subconscious.”