Did You Know: Anthony Hopkins and the Strange Coincidence
Did You Know: Anthony Hopkins and the Strange Coincidence
By Erik Davis - 1/28/2011
We received one of those books you read in the bathroom over the holidays, and in it was this fascinating story about Anthony Hopkins, who arrives in theaters today with the horror film 'The Rite.' So it goes like this ...
In 1974, Hopkins starred in a film called 'The Girl from Petrovka,' based on the book by George Feifer. Not long after signing on to the film, Hopkins went to London to try to track down a copy of the book. After canvasing several bookshops, however, he couldn't find one. Frustrated and defeated, Hopkins entered the Leicester Square stop to board a train home when all of a sudden he spotted a copy of 'The Girl from Petrovka' that appeared to have been discarded on a nearby bench. Naturally he swiped it, and if the story ended there it'd be a pretty funny coincidence.
But the story doesn't end there. Two years later while filming in Vienna, author George Feifer visited the set. During a conversation with Hopkins, Feifer mentioned that he didn't even have a copy of his own book -- that he'd lent his last one (complete with his own annotations) to a friend who had lost it somewhere in London. Hopkins, puzzled, then fetched his copy, which also had notes in the margins. When he showed it to Feifer, the author confirmed that, amazingly, it was the same book.