Taron Egerton has revealed the advice Anthony Hopkins gave him before playing a villain in his recent movie Apex.
In the Netflix action movie, which was released in April, Charlize Theron plays a seasoned climber who is pursued by Egerton's ruthless hunter Ben in an Australian national park.
Before playing his first-ever on-screen psychopath, Egerton reached out to fellow Welshman Hopkins - who famously played cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter in 1991's The Silence of the Lambs - for advice.
"I'm very honoured to say that I have a sort of slight pen pal relationship with Anthony Hopkins, and I asked him before doing the movie for advice about playing a really f**ked-up individual," he shared on Monday's episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard.
"And he said something like, 'I don't know where Lecter came from, probably something in my childhood.' But he said, 'The only advice I would give you, and I don't need to tell you this, but the only advice I would give you is don't play the evil. Play him as the hero of his story.'"
He added, "I really took that advice forward with me."
Hopkins won a Best Actor Oscar and BAFTA for his portrayal of Lecter, a role he reprised in 2001's Hannibal and 2002's Red Dragon.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Egerton addressed his ripped physique in the movie and admitted he ran himself "absolutely ragged" to achieve that body.
"It's worth being wary of that, I think, because that version of me in Apex, the guy who's whatever silly body fat I was, and all kind of strong, every day I punish myself for not looking like that. But the truth of the matter is that I starved myself," the 36-year-old candidly said.
The Rocketman star noted that he was often "filled with self-loathing" during his "shirtless days" filming Apex and his 2014 breakout film Kingsman: The Secret Service.
"I couldn't enjoy it at the time because I'd completely lost any distorted sense of perspective," he confessed.
