In a particularly wrenching scene in "The Father," a new film directed by the French novelist Florian Zeller, Anthony Hopkins's title character is disoriented with dementia, talking to a caregiver. He asks when his mother is going to visit him and begins to cry, repeatedly saying: "I want my mummy. I want my mummy."

"Just saying those words takes me back to the age of 4 or 5," Hopkins said on a recent Zoom call from California. "Grief of a child, you know. They're left outside of the shop, and they get scared. So that's all in there. It's all contained in the back of my head."

There are many similarities between Hopkins and his latest tour-de-force, Golden Globe-nominated role. Hopkins turned 83 on Dec. 31. His character in "The Father," also named Anthony, has the actor's exact birth date. His character's flat is decorated with paintings and a piano - Hopkins himself is a painter and pianist - and even the character's wardrobe reflects the actor's sartorial preferences.

"He always likes cardigan," said Debra Winger, Hopkins's co-star in the 1993 drama "Shadowlands." "Yeah, there's so much Tony in there."

Hopkins has quipped that he "didn't have to act old age, because I am old." And while neither of his late parents experienced dementia, he remembered his father raging against the dying of the light when the old Welshman's fatal heart disease left him angry and confused.

"I started doing (the film), and I didn't think of it," said Hopkins. "But when I saw it later, I thought I was my own father."

If you follow Sir Anthony Hopkins on Instagram, though, what you'll see is the playfulness and mischievousness of a little boy. There he is playing piano with his cat, Niblo, on his lap. There he is contorting his face and cackling maniacally, starting to feel the "side effects" of quarantine.

That persona may be jarring to fans of the veteran thespian who, in his Oscar-nominated roles in films such as "The Remains of the Day," is the very master of dignity. But his friend and frequent acting partner, Emma Thompson, knows that kind of behavior to be the real "Tony."

"There's a kind of Welsh sprite in there, a Celtic spirit," said Thompson, who first worked with Hopkins on the period drama "Howard's End" in 1992. It was right after he won his first (and only) Academy Award for playing cannibal Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs." (He is nominated for an Oscar again for "The Father"; the movie is up for Best Picture.) They met in an elevator, and Thompson handed Hopkins a note from her mother — the Scottish actress Phyllida Law, who knew Hopkins — that read: "Hello Tony. I hope you're well. This is my daughter. Please don't eat her."

"He just laughed," said Thompson. "But I remember those extraordinary eyes, and that coiled energy. I thought, 'Oh God, I'm going to have such a good time with this person.' Because he was so funny ... and also clearly anarchic, as well as a volcano."

Hopkins grew up in a southern coastal town in Wales as the only child of Richard and Muriel, a couple who led a hardscrabble life running a bakery. His grandfather toiled in the steelworks, "and I remember him coming home from work exhausted," said Hopkins, "his boots white with sweat and salt, working in the blast furnaces. Anyone who complains to me about anything, I say, 'You know nothing. Wake up, smell the coffee, because you know nothing.'" It's an attitude the multi-award-winning actor still has today as he constantly deflates his profession of self-importance and emphasizes the ease of his work: "It's common sense. There's no big deal to it."

Hopkins found that calling early, and within a decade of graduating from college he was understudying for Laurence Olivier at London's National Theatre. He made his international debut acting opposite Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn in the Oscar-winning 1968 film "The Lion in Winter" and never looked back.

His co-stars attribute Hopkins's easy acting style to his total openness. Olivia Colman, who plays his daughter in "The Father," said that "of the actors that I really admire, that I've been lucky enough to work with, they all have a similar thing — which is sort of no armor at all. Complete honesty. He's sort of like a great big puppy. He's willing to play. He's willing to do anything."

The mother-son relationship is reflected in the actor's new film. Hopkins "just adored his mother," Winger said. "And I think that came from that same place that, whatever magic and whatever she did right, in a way allowed him to keep the young boy inside of him."

Muriel Hopkins was widowed in 1981, and she lived with her son (who moved to America in the '70s) until she died in 2003. "She was a strong, powerful woman," Hopkins said. "I think she was like all mothers - a bit possessive. I'm the only child. But I'd be abnormal, I would be nothing without that bond or that connection."

"We can hide behind machismo, machoness, you know," he said, comically grunting, but being an actor lets loose "all those so-called emotions that I don't like to display too much. When I'm working as an actor, I have a lot of memories. A lot of things come to the surface from childhood."

Hopkins believes we're all deeply lonely, and acknowledging that, along with our know-nothing state, is liberating. And in yet another trait he shares with his character in "The Father," Hopkins listens to music to enhance that feeling, particularly arias.

"I think they string into something so deep inside us — the female," he said. "You hear Maria Callas sing, and you think: Oh God. Goes back to the mother."