Anthony Hopkins to take on role in New York mobster biopic Gotti
Welsh acting legend Anthony Hopkins has been named in the cast of the highly anticipated biopic of American mafiosi John Gotti.
May 20, 2013
He's played a Norse god, a crazed serial killer and a string of real life characters including Richard Nixon, Picasso and Captain William Bligh.
Now Port Talbot-born Sir Anthony Hopkins is to take on the role of a senior New York gangster in the forthcoming mobster biopic Gotti.
The movie is based on the story of real-life mafia boss, John “The Teflon Don” Gotti.
Film financing, distribution and sales company IM Global announced 75-year-old Hopkins would be joining the cast of Gotti at the Cannes Film Festival.
American actor, dancer and singer John Travolta is to play John Gotti and his wife Preston will play Gotti’s wife, Victoria. Captain America director Joe Johnston will lead the project.
He said: “I think we’ve always been fascinated with the idea of the romantic outlaw. John Gotti could be in one instance a charismatic, kind and loving family man, and in another, deadly to his enemies.”
Hopkins’ role has not yet been announced but he is expected to play a leading mobster.
John Gotti, born into poverty in New York’s South Bronx, became the head of the Gambino crime family in New York after organising the killing of Paul “Big Paul” Castellano who had previously led what was then the nation’s biggest cosa nostra family.
Gotti got his “Teflon Don” nickname after the authorities in New York failed to make charges stick against the gangster despite three high profile trials.
However, Gotti, also known as the “Dapper Don” because of his sharp suits, spent the last ten years of his life in jail after finally being convicted of five counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and racketeering.
Gotti’s so-called underboss Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano has been credited with helping the FBI eventually bring Gotti to justice.
In 1991, Gravano turned state’s evidence to testify for the prosecution against Gotti after hearing his boss on police tape recordings making disparaging remarks about him behind his back.
Sentenced to life in prison without parole Gotti died in 2002 aged 61 of throat cancer.
Gotti’s flamboyant style was at odds with most of his peers who preferred staying out of the limelight.
Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, a former leading figure in the Lucchese crime family said: “What John Gotti did, was the beginning of the end of Cosa Nostra”..
From an original idea by his son, John A Gotti, the film has been scripted by Leo Rossi, who previously wrote Mafioso: The Father, The Son.
Hopkins, one of the most prolific and versatile actors in Hollywood, has recently finished work on Darren Aronofsky’s biblical epic, Noah in which he plays Methuselah and is due to start work next on Andy Garcia’s movie Hemingway & Fuentes.
Hopkins is also reported to have signed on to play the part of lager billionaire Freddie Heineken in a movie about the Dutch tycoon’s kidnap in Amsterdam in the 1980s.
Gotti is due to shooting this September in New York.
He is also reprising his role as king of the norse gods Odin in Thor: The Dark World (due for release in November) and will play a mad nuclear scientist alongside the likes of Helen Mirren, Catherine Zeta Jones, Brian Cox, John Malkovich and Bruce Willis in the spy spoof Red 2 due for release in July.
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/showbiz/anthony-hopkins-take-role-new-3878221
