A&E’s popular weekly series PRIVATE SESSIONS features the renowned actor, writer and director Anthony Hopkins in an intimate one-hour interview with series host Lynn Hoffman this Sunday, October 28 @ 9 AM ET/PT.



Private Sessions explores Hopkins life and work including his latest film Slipstream, about the intertwining worlds of dream and reality, which he wrote, directed, composed music for and acted in.



Hopkins invites viewers on the journey of his young life in Wales, England, his unintended leap into acting and his obsession with American culture from the beat generation to folk music to film noir. The screen legend reveals how his career began when an accidental theatre debut in London led him to work alongside some of the greatest names in entertainment like Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn to eventually staring in the infamous role that took him from a working actor to a cultural icon and Academy Award winner, as Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs.



Filmed in a small, intimate studio in New York City, the series showcases exclusive performances and conversations with top names in entertainment. Each Sunday morning Private Sessions explores the body of work of a single artist or group and feature current releases as well as career-building, influential or defining projects.



Some excerpted bites from the interview follow:



On playing Hannibal Lecter:



“See, the trick to playing a man like that, who is so evil is to play him normal, as if he’s perfectly normal.”



“The tragedy is that Lecter is a brilliant brain caught in a very sick head. But I didn’t do any research, I just had an instinct for this part. I mean, those villains are colorful ones to play.”



“They are mesmerizing because they walk on the razors edge of chance all the time. They are self destruct merchants. They walk on the tight rope. We go to the circus we see some daring stuff, I think that’s what the audience is pulled to. It’s an attraction to that sort of daring and courage.”



On actor Michael Clarke Duncan’s performance in Slipstream causing him to forget the lines he wrote:



“…He took it in a different direction, so much so that I forgot my lines…This guy is fantastic…”



On the only other actor to make him forget his lines:



“…Alec Baldwin did that once, he was so good.”



On Alec Baldwin saving his life during the filming of The Edge by stopping production to get him surgery on a herniated disc in his neck:



“He saved my life on that movie because I had an injury to my neck… It was Alec who stopped [the movie]. He said you got to get this guy to a hospital. He said you can’t go on doing this, this is crazy. The best, most generous guy I’ve ever worked with.”



On working with Alec Baldwin on The Edge:



“He’s the best…he’s gang busters.”



On Slipstream as a statement of Hopkin’s latent rebellion:



“…I was not really good at school… I read Ginsberg’s “Howl”… I read Kerouac’s “On the Road”…. So all my stuff was Woody Guthrie and I became a Bob Dylan Fan. So all of my stuff was in American culture. I didn’t fit into my own country. It was nobody else’s fault, it was my problem, I couldn’t fit in. So I came to America thirty odd years ago. And here I am today, and [Slipstream] I suppose was a statement of my latent rebellion.



On whom he would like to work with:



[Robert] De Niro, [Martin] Scorsese, Joe Pesci, [Al] Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, God you’ve got some great actors there. Meryl Streep I’d love to work with…so many actors I would love to work with. I have met them, most of them. Dustin and Pacino, Jack Nicholson. God, what a bunch they are. Great, great actors. Oh, you know who else? Ed Norton is great.



On American actors influencing him growing up:



“I wanted to become a method actor because all American actors were method actors. “