Hopkins could play anyone, given his talents--especially for mimickry. He is a phenom. I saw him on a bio program about Brando. There must be 200 million Vito Corleone imitators in the world, but Hopkins, in 10 seconds, did the best Vito imitation I ever heard.

Perhaps you've heard this one before:

When the studio was re-releasing "Spartacus," they restored a scene with Olivier and Tony Curtis in a bath together because, at the time, it was considered too racy. The soundtrack from the deleted scene was corrupted. Curtis was available to reread his lines, but Olivier was dead. They hired Hopkins to do Olivier's voice-over.