Actor Anthony Hopkins was a self-acclaimed atheist for the greater part of his life. However, a single question about God posed at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting shifted his perception drastically.
Hopkins described his spiritual turning point during an appearance at the 11th annual LEAP conference.
During a pivotal AA meeting in 1975, a woman asked the actor a simple question that led to deep introspection for Hopkins.
“Why don’t you just trust in God?” she asked.
The fellow AA member’s advice led Hopkins to say “why not” and take what he called a “quantum leap” out of his state of doubt and unbelief.
Miraculously, from that point moving forward Hopkins says his “insatiable craving for alcohol vanished.”
Prior to that unexplainable moment in which he broke free from addiction, he described himself as “disgusted, busted and not to be trusted.”
“I was hell-bent on destruction,” Hopkins admitted in an earlier interview with Piers Morgan. “And I just asked for a little bit of help, and suddenly, pow. It was just like, bingo. It was like being possessed by a demon, an addiction, and I couldn’t stop. And [there are] millions of people around like that. I could not stop.”
While he does not specifically identify as Christian, the 81-year-old actor has become more convinced of the existence of God as he ages.
“I feel every day, as I get older, anyway, that it’s all a miracle,” said Hopkins. “I mean, my heart beats, my lungs breathe. That is an extraordinary — an extraordinary phenomenon.”
While Anthony Hopkins has, at times, played characters who are truly evil, the actor lives out his real life with Christ in his heart. He’s been an atheist before finding God and now he just feels sorry for atheists, comparing a life of disbelief to “living in a closed cell with no windows.”
“I’d hate to have to live like that, wouldn’t you?” Sir Anthony Hopkins asked.
Watch Anthony Hopkins open up about his beliefs in his interview about the box office hit “Noah”, in which he starred as 969-year-old Methuselah:
