Anthony Hopkins is estranged from his only child, has no idea if he has grandchildren

Transformers Oxford

Anthony Hopkins is such an odd bird. I realize he must have had a lousy childhood and young-adulthood in Wales and beyond, but it sometimes feels like he just blacked out all associations with Great Britain at some point. He’s an American citizen now, and he lives full-time in California. Several years back, he claimed he was close to retirement, but he still works pretty often, sometimes on really weird projects. “Weird” as in “dude, are you poor?” projects with Michael Bay. We don’t know his life – maybe he is putting away some money so his family will be taken care of. Except that when he left Britain, he barely looked back, even when it was about his daughter Abigail. Hopkins recently spoke about how little he knows of his only child (who is now an adult):

Sir Anthony Hopkins, 80, has not spoken to daughter Abigail – his only child – for two decades. Such is their estrangement that he does not even know if he is a grandfather. Sir Anthony said he ‘didn’t care’ about the family split, admitting that he was ‘cold’ about his 48-year-old daughter, who uses the name Abigail Harrison. Asked if Miss Harrison – an actress and theatre director who changed her surname so that she could have a ‘career on her own terms’ – had children, Sir Anthony said: ‘I don’t have any idea. People break up. Families split and, you know, “get on with your life”. People make choices. I don’t care one way or the other. It is cold. Because life is cold.’

Miss Harrison was brought up by her mother, Sir Anthony’s first wife Petronella Barker, after the couple divorced when she was four. The pair briefly reconnected in the 1990s and she appeared in two of his films, Shadowlands and The Remains Of The Day. However, they quickly became estranged again and Sir Anthony, who stars in the BBC adaptation of King Lear to be shown next week, claimed he does not even know where his daughter lives.

As with Shakespeare’s tragedy, ‘children don’t like their fathers, you don’t have to love each other’, he told Radio Times.

[From The Daily Mail]

It sounds cold and HE sounds very cold, but I sort of wonder… do you think he’s making some kind of reference to the estrangement being his daughter’s choice? “Children don’t like their fathers…” meaning that Abigail made the choice to cut him out of her life? Maybe I’m being too nice to Hopkins, though. I can’t say I blame Abigail for cutting him out of her life if he was barely there in the first place, and if he really doesn’t give a f–k about whether his ONLY biological child is a mother herself, then I can’t say I blame her for cutting him out of her life, if that’s what happened.

Premiere of Michael Bay's 'Transformers: The Last Knight' - Arrivals

Photos courtesy of WENN.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZmbm9oaoJ1e8Cnq6Gnnq6sqbvPpKCnq4%2BewKCx0q2pmqaXmrGgstGopJigmaissLrLspacoJmhsaC0wKyWp6ePnrGmrb6inZiglZS1or%2B%2BoKmappSYtaq4w6ucp2c%3D