THEY WERE BOTH CHILD SCREW-UPS — the kind of unfocused kids who make parents weep.
"I was bad at everything. I used to sit in the back of the class my whole school career. My father said to my mother, 'There's something radically wrong with this boy.' He despaired of me," says Sir Anthony Hopkins with a chuckle.
"I was always picking fights. Because I thought that was what the girls would like," says Ryan Gosling. "I'd pick on the toughest guys because the girls liked them. So if I beat them up the girls would like me. But it never worked. I was just in so much trouble. They called me 'Trouble'; that was my nickname."
Years later (about 60 for Hopkins and a mere 10 for Gosling), the pair, small-town guys from modest backgrounds in Wales and Canada, respectively, are celebrated actors, an Oscar winner and a nominee, with the psychic gratification of proving wrong all who ever doubted and gratitude for those who incongruously believed in scrappy boys with no discernible talent. The duo star as antagonists -- the proverbial cat and mouse -- in the thriller "Fracture," which opened Friday, but it's clear as they sit in the coffee shop of Santa Monica's Fairmont Hotel (a favorite hangout of Hopkins) that they barely know each other.
Both seem surprised and amused to know they shared an early disdain for school. "I became an actor because I didn't know what else to do," says Hopkins. "If you're creative or artistic, I think you live in another world. It's difficult to grasp onto things."
In person, the man famous for playing one of the most diabolical killers in the world -- the depraved and brilliant Dr. Hannibal Lecter -- is jolly, erudite and interested in other people, although he alchemically exerts an almost gravitational pull to himself. Dressed in a slouchy khaki blazer over a striped polo shirt, he speaks in a quiet rasp, with an air of devilish glee. He describes himself as "hyperactive. I wish I could sit and relax, but I can't. I have this driving force in me that makes me move and get out of bed in the morning. It may be a kind of neurosis, but I feel happy."
On a typical nonworking day, he flits between reading, playing the piano and, more and more, painting. "I paint and paint. I could do five paintings in a day," he says. Recently, he's sold a bunch and given the proceeds to charity.
