Q&A: World's Fastest Indian Star Anthony Hopkins
Acting legend Hopkins discusses World's Fastest speed demon Burt Munro and why motorcycles awe him.
By Karl Rozemeyer
More than twenty years after The Bounty, Sir Anthony Hopkins has once again teamed up with Australian director Roger Donaldson. Their collaboration, The World's Fastest Indian, is the story of Burt Munro, a quirky New Zealander who set out to convert a 1920 Indian motorcycle into the world's fastest two-wheeled machine. Munro, played by Hopkins, eventually broke the land-speed world record on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah in 1967.
Is this movie your first 'biking' movie?
Yeah, but I did play a speed record breaker almost twenty years ago [in Across the Lake]. I was a man called Donald Campbell who broke the world speed water record at Coniston in 1966. He was killed when he was doing it.
Are you a motorcycle fan? Have you ever owned one?
No. My father had an Indian cycle during [WWII] and I did get on a bike when I was in the army. I was doing national service and I fell off very badly and could have been killed. I was so badly bruised and beat up. So this is the first time I have been back on a bike in forty years.
What was it that drew you to the script?
It was a good script and I had worked with Roger Donaldson before. I also liked the nature of this man that I was playing. He was different than any other character I have played.
What was different about this character?
I have always played these weird characters in movies. I enjoyed them, but this is just different. [Monro] was a much easier man to play. I like being outdoors, out in the open [in] Bonneville.
Would you consider that you felt closer to this role compared to some of the other characters you have played?
Yes because I am not like those other characters. Hannibal Lecter I am not. [Laughs].
Burt Monroe is also an older man who refuses to get old.
There is a wonderful scene in the documentary film that Roger Donaldson made about him. He says, "You live life more in five minutes on the back of a motorbike than you can in an entire lifetime. It is better than being a cabbage watching television all the time. And having a nice couple of pretty ladies around can help a lot." He was just a guy who loved life. He also said that once you're dead, you're dead. You never come back. "You're like a blade of grass and you just blow away. So you may as well enjoy it." And that is my philosophy. Enjoy it.
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