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Sir Anthony Hopkins to star as NZ bike racer
Academy Award-winning actor Sir Anthony Hopkins will star in a film to be made in New Zealand this year about world record-breaking motorcyclist Burt Munro.
Hopkins, who won an Oscar for his performance as Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, is reported to be playing the part of Munro. Filming is due to start in August.
The movie, titled The World's Fastest Indian after the Invercargill rider's Indian Scout bike, is being made by New Zealand filmmaker Roger Donaldson, who first outlined his plans to make a movie about Munro 25 years ago.
Munro spent 50 years as a competitive motorcyclist, developing and racing his 1920 Indian Scout to break records in New Zealand, Australia and America.
He shattered speed records at Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, where he set world records in the 1960s, and was still racing at 76.
He died in 1978, aged 78.
Margaret Popenhagen, one of Munro's four children, is happy that the movie is going ahead.
"I think Roger has been keen to do this for a long time," she said.
Allan Munro said his grandfather had many fans in the United States.
The racing enthusiast had fitted one person's lifetime into every year and there would be no shortage of material, he said.
Donaldson directed Hopkins in Mutiny on the Bounty (1984) with Mel Gibson and went on to make No Way Out, Cocktail, Thirteen Days and The Recruit.
The project extends New Zealand's growing reputation as a location for major Hollywood pictures.
Apart from Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, recent films include The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise. Upcoming are the blockbusters King Kong and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
