HOPKINS: I was supposed to make a film about Hitchcock. It's a really good script but it's been postponed because they have to check with the Hitchcock estate. It's about the making of "Psycho," but not just about the making of "Psycho." It's about the inner workings of Hitchcock's mind and his personality and his relationship with people.

QUESTION: DID IT HAVE A DIRECTOR?

HOPKINS: Ryan Murphy, the director of "Running With Scissors." But it's been postponed. I've got another one on the table with Morgan Freeman and William H. Macy sometime this year. And another one Wolfman with Benicio Del Toro in London, but I haven't heard anything more. My agent said it was a fine script. So all kinds of things.

QUESTION: HAVEN'T YOU JUST DIRECTED?

HOPKINS: Yeah, I directed a film called "Slipstream," which I wrote and play in it and wrote the music. It's got a good cast: John Turturro, Christian Slater, Fionnula Flanagan.

QUESTION: WHATS THE STATUS?

HOPKINS: I think it'll be released in September.

QUESTION: DID YOU ENJOY YOUR SUNDANCE EXPERIENCE? HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU BEEN THERE?

HOPKINS: Yeah, I did. I've only been there once for the actual festival but I went there just on the few days holiday with my wife about four years ago. We traveled around the country.

QUESTION: DID PART OF YOU WANT THIS GUY TO GET AWAY? WHEN YOU WERE READING THE SCRIPT DID YOU WANT HIM TO?

HOPKINS: Did you want him to get away? Some people wanted Lecter to get away with it. What it is: the classic villains like Iago and Richard III, they're attractive and charismatic because they walk the knife edge. They are the existentialist men. They dare everything. They have no ... like the Scottish king, Macbeth, they face catastrophe and unblinkingly go on. They're mesmeric because there's a part of our nature that yearns to be that courageous. There are people like that. I had an uncle like that. Uncle Eric was an amazing guy. He had no concerns about anything. He breezed through life. He never paid his income tax. Sometimes he was broke; sometimes he made money. He wasn't a con man but he was so charming. He was my hero. I said to my aunt Gussie who was his sister. She was an elderly lady - she was very Christian and churchgoing. Oh no, that's about another brother, my grandfather's brother, my uncle Jim, who was bad. He took money from people; borrowed money from people and never paid it back. He led a lonely miserable life in the end. There's a photograph of him that I have where he's dressed in a kilt. I didn't know he was Scottish. He looked like a real villain. I asked my aunt about him and she said, oh, he was bad terrible man but he made me laugh, though.

QUESTION: WOULD YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS HAVE MADE GOOD ACTORS?

HOPKINS: I guess they were.

QUESTION: YOU PUT YOUR SKILLS TO GOOD USE.

HOPKINS: My father was a frustrated actor. He was a good storyteller. But my Uncle Jim, I never met him, he died in 1936, I always wondered about him but everyone said he was bad.

QUESTION: WAS THERE A FILM THAT CHANGED YOUR LIFE OR MADE YOU WANT TO GET INTO THIS BUSINESS?

HOPKINS: I saw a movie when I was a kid, about 12. It was a sentimental one with Charlie Chaplin called "Limelight." My parents sent me to see it. When I was in school, I was so hopeless; I didn't know what time of day it was. I couldn't play sports or understand what anyone was talking about. My father worried about me because I was an only child. I felt pretty lonely. But I could play the piano and paint. And write. So I was creative. I went to see "Limelight" about a failed man, a vaudeville guy who rescues this young girl from suicide. He dies in the end while she goes onto success, and it touched me so deeply and profoundly that it started to change my life. I wrote a letter to Chaplin, who was living in Switzerland. He'd just been kicked out of America. And I got a letter back from him that said, thank you for your nice letter and 40-odd years later, I was sitting in the Bay House doing Chaplin with Robert Downey Jr. Actually, in the garden of the house. I was in Charlie Chaplin's garden having lunch. There was a knock on (my trailer) door and the director said, you've just been nominated for an Oscar. If someone had told me that 40 years to the month that that would have happened, I would have (shakes his head), but it was so odd. I'm convinced that life is an illusion, some kind of dream, a fabric that we weave for ourselves.

QUESTION: BESIDES THE HITCHCOCK ROLE IS THERE SOME OTHER CHARCATER YOU’D LIKE TO PLAY?

HOPKINS: No. I've done it.

QUESTION: WHAT'S THE ROLE YOU'RE DOING WITH WILLIAM H. MACY AND MORGAN FREEMAN?

HOPKINS: I don't know about it yet. It's about three guys that work in an art gallery and they become obsessed with these three pieces in the same gallery so they steal the pieces. It's a nice comedy.

QUESTION: Does that film have a title?

HOPKINS: I can't remember.