Several Facebook posts, including one shared more than 35,000 times, have recently attributed some famous inspirational advice to the actor Sir Anthony Hopkins. But we can find no evidence he’s behind the quote, and it actually appears to have been written in 2015 by Nanea Hoffman, founder of the lifestyle brand Sweatpants & Coffee.
The advice reads: “None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an after thought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else.”
We’ve found no evidence that the Welsh actor said or wrote this advice, and as the US fact checker Snopes pointed out in 2019, these words have been attributed without evidence to Sir Anthony before—and also to the actors Keanu Reeves, Richard Gere and Christopher Walken.
We often see quotes wrongly attributed to actors, politicians and other famous people as part of our work fact-checking online misinformation, and this is not the first time we’ve written about people attributing inspiring messages to Sir Anthony without any evidence.
Image courtesy of Elena Torre from Viareggio, Italia (edited by User:Marco Bernardini)