Hopkins splits up with lover
Hannibal star Sir Anthony Hopkins has split from long-time love Francine Kay because he had 'no desire for any commitment'.
The couple were still thought to be an item after Kay, 44, visited the actor in Italy where he was filming the Silence of the Lambs sequel. But Hopkins confessed that the couple, who live close to each other in Los Angeles, ended their three-year romance last year.
He said the break-up came about because he was not ready for anything more serious. In an interview with the US magazine People, Hopkins, who is still married to wife Jenni, admitted he was a bad husband and never told her he was becoming a US citizen.
Hopkins, 62, said: 'When I get too close to someone I want to move on. Jenni says: "You're a strange man. You don't need anything". I don't. I don't feel ready - or any desire - for any commitment. I've hurt enough people.'
Screenwriter Kay said: 'We found out we were best as friends. That's our strongest bond.'
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Two weeks ago, the 62-year-old star sparked the wrath of his native Wales by renouncing his citizenship to become a United States citizen.
And, in an even more damaging development, lurid details have emerged about his unusual 30-year marriage to Jenni Lynton Hopkins.
Incredibly, Jenni, also 62, says she didn’t know her husband had become an American citizen until reporters greeted her with the news on the steps of her London townhouse.
“It was as much a shock to me as it was to everyone. I didn’t know a thing about it,” Jenni told London’s Mail.
True, they haven’t lived together for five years, and Hopkins has been seen in public with a sexy girlfriend young enough to be his daughter.
But, according to Jenni, her husband appears to have no intention of divorcing her.
In an updated edition of “Anthony Hopkins: The Authorized Biography,” to be published by Virgin next month, Jenni tells author Quentin Falk that Hopkins has always been distant.
“Tony was never the sort of person you do things with together ... Even within marriage, he has always been alone, has always wanted time on his own,” Jenni says in the new book.
Not that Hopkins was ever really alone during his times away from Jenni.
An alcoholic who started treatment in 1975 after his award-winning performance in Broadway’s “Equus,” Hopkins once left home and wife to have an affair with a young woman named Joyce Ingalls, whom he met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
When the romance died, Hopkins came back home as if nothing had happened, offered no apology and, in fact, told Jenni to forget about it, she claims.
“He said when we met up again, ‘It’s finished, it’s over and I don’t want to talk about it,'” Jenni says.*
Now there’s his new girlfriend, Francine Kay, a 30-something knockout who accompanied Hopkins to the Oscars.
“There’s been fallout from all of this. He’s still technically married ... You could say that Jenni has been incredibly long-suffering,” author Falk told The Post.
Hopkins is ambivalent about his marital status.
“If you ask me, ‘Are Jenni and I separated?’ I guess we are,” he said. “She always said she doesn’t like California. I can’t make her like it, any more than I can make myself stay in England. This is my life here. I like being on my own.”