ANTHONY HOPKINS, KING OF THE DANES

Anthony Hopkins plays the Danish king whose kingdom is being terrorized by a demon monster Grendel in Beowulf.

Beowulf and his troops travel across the sea from Geatland to Denmark to assist King Hrothgar played by Anthony Hopkins with slaying the monster Grendel who seems to be immune to most weapons.

Anthony chose to speak in his native Welsh tongue to begin the characterization of the lecherous drunken Danish king.

“Because Welsh is a pretty ancient language and it goes back several thousand years, the original Celtic roots of language. I don’t know the history of it but it sounds pretty archaic so that’s what I chose. A few days in I found another way of playing Hrothgar, playing him as an open kind of drunken buffoon at the beginning was fun.”

Crispin Glover is the monster Grendel, living under the swamp terrorizing Denmark.

“And there’s this kind of a lot of screaming vocalization which I didn’t plan on that. I had some of that in there initially and then Bob Zemeckis said, ‘just keep screaming.’ I don’t know if you might even have that on video, I don’t know. That was a good suggestion because it really does have a lot of emotive element, you can feel a lot from that.”

Beowulf also stars Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s sexy serpent mother, and Robin Wright Penn plays Hopkins’ Queen Wealthow.