Old Master and rising star face off in “Fracture”
By Melissa Gentry
Gosling and Hopkins in ‘Fracture’
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 4/20/07 — Oscar and Emmy award winner, Anthony Hopkins is burning the midnight oil this year with the ambitious slate of four new productions. As usual Sir Anthony surrounds himself with the best young talent, in this case America’s heart-throb from “The Notebook,” Ryan Gosling, in a thriller entitled “Fracture.” The old master and the rising star play chess as Gosling plays an assistant DA who gets caught up in a game of cat-and-mouse with a man (Hopkins) who tried to murder his wife and is set free on a series of technicalities.
Anthony had nothing but praise for the young chap, ““He’s very naturalistic, a bit like James Dean I guess.” Gosling was an Oscar Nominee this year for for his performance in “Half Nelson.” He is by far one of the hottest new stars, and according to “People Magazine” one of the “Fifty Hottest Bachelors.” Gosling has been on the rise for awhile now, and was projected to have a fulfilling future awaiting him; in 2004 at the Show West Convention of Movie Exhibitors he was named “Male Star of Tomorrow.”
Hopkins further said Gosling could spot the fracture in the script, as Hopkins’ character does to a court case in the film. “He’s an up and coming big actor and very smart. He was concerned about the end of the movie because of the forensic element and the legality of the gun (that his character uses to murder his wife). I get lost in all that stuff figuring it out but he and (director) Gregory (Hoblit) and (writer) Glenn (Gers) figured it out and we had a re-shoot of the end which I think is much better than the original version we had when we finished it last year.”
“Fracture” premiered at the 7th Annual “Phoenix Film Festival” last week receiving solid reviews, “Intense, intriguing and provocative” ran one. And that’s not all the buzz “Fracture” is receiving, it already has a growing fan club on movie internet site Flixster.
Another Hopkins’s film finds him with a trio of duties: acting, writing and directing for the up and coming production of “Slipstream,” “a dream within a dream.” “Slipstream” is a fast paced comedy noir about a man’s mystifying journey as he faces fate, stuck in what Hopkins’s calls, “his own personal hell.”
“I broke all the rules in filming it. It’s only 95 minutes and it tells the story very fast. He’s like an outsider from himself. Something cataclysmic has happened to him and he’s running around in a limbo and doesn’t know who he is or where he is. It’s the impact of death which all takes place in one millisecond between his moment of impact and his demise. You’re wondering if he’s really dead or does life just go on. It’s a dream within a dream. It’s similar to Jacob’s Ladder. We’re getting it released in September.”
Hopkins experienced his own little hell on set with his Achilles tendon, “I was doing a scene and I decided to run barefooted. I thought, ‘Oh I’m only twenty-five years old’ (in the scene) and so I put on some speed and I ripped the tendon,” but that wasn’t enough to keep him off set. Although the accident left him hopping about, he managed to get around on set and direct from a wheelchair. When he finally got to the hospital they called him crazy and could not believe that he was standing on a torn ankle. Other than that, he said he enjoyed being behind the scenes and directing himself.
Anthony Hopkins has come a long way from the days of the “Lion In Winter,” Hopkins’s first movie where he played, Richard, the son of King Henry II, but even in those days his future was projected to be bright. Hopkins’s enriched and inspiring career was foreseen by Peter O’Toole, “You got the part. You’re gonna be a big star,” and he couldn’t have been more right. Anthony Hopkins’s is one the most respected screen actors of his time, and remains an inspiration to today’s youthful aspiring actors.