A person’s ideas about God develop and change throughout their entire life. Their beliefs are never set in stone, and they can undergo dramatic shifts at any point in a person’s life. For Anthony Hopkins, his sudden change from disbelief to faith came later in life.

According to Hopkins, he abandoned atheism for belief in a higher power during an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in 1975. His alcoholism 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.” When he asked for help, a woman asked him, “Why don’t you just trust in God?” Hopkins recounted that he thought, “Well, why not?” Immediately afterward, Hopkins said, his craving for alcohol vanished. The moment was a major turning point in his life. “I was hell bend on destruction,” Hopkins recalls. “And I just asked for a little bit of help, and suddenly, pow. It was just like, bingo.”

As he has gotten older, his views have continued to evolve, and his belief has continued to deepen. “I feel every day, as I get older, anyway, that it’s all a miracle,” he said. “I mean, my heart beats, my lungs breathe. That is an extraordinary, an extraordinary phenomenon.”

Though he does not self-identify as a Christian, Hopkins has not hesitated to confirm his belief in God. When Piers Morgan asked, “Do you believe in God?” Hopkins answered immediately.  “Yes, I do. I do.”

Hopkins has believed for decades but has not spoken much about his initial decision to trust God. Now, however, he has opened up about how he found himself praying to God during his time of need, even though he did not believe in God. Despite his hesitant belief, Hopkins’ prayer was answered, and his life changed forever. He now says it was “nonsense” for him to think that he could do anything and conquer anything on his own. Instead, he has taken to heart the advice of that woman from long ago and put his trust in someone more powerful than a mere man.

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.

In 2024, it was announced that Hopkins would play the role of King Herod in the Netflix biblical epic “Mary.” The film, set for release on December 6th, tells the story of the Nativity from an untold perspective: through the eyes of Mary of Nazareth, mother of Jesus Christ.