Tanzanian president sworn in after election unrest

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Speaker 3 This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

Speaker 3 I'm Andrew Peach and at 1630 on Monday, the 3rd of November, these are our main stories.

Speaker 3 Tanzania's president, Samir Saluhu Hassan, is sworn in for a second term under tight security after disputed elections marred by violence and protests.

Speaker 3 The leader of Spain's Valencia region resigns a year after being accused of mishandling the response to flash flooding that killed around 230 people.

Speaker 3 Also, in this podcast, fears grow for tens of thousands of people trapped in Sudan's Alfasha.

Speaker 11 The testimony from these people and from local responders that we've worked with in Alfasha is incredibly grim. It's violent, they describe summary executions.

Speaker 3 We begin, though, in Tanzania.

Speaker 3 After days of violent unrest, President Samia Suluhu Hassan has been sworn in for a second term.

Speaker 3 She swore to perform her duties with diligence and sincerity and vowed to treat everyone fairly in line with the country's laws.

Speaker 3 But hundreds of people died in clashes after the presidential election, which she won with nearly 98% of the vote.

Speaker 3 With many opposition challengers either imprisoned or barred from running, international observers have strongly criticised how the election was conducted.

Speaker 3 Akisa Wandera is in Nairobi and told me more about the ceremony and the extraordinary security surrounding it.

Speaker 12 An unusual ceremony that broke from tradition where the public often attends the swearing-in of an elected president.

Speaker 12 This time round, there was heavy security and only a select few government officials, foreign dignitaries, and members of the ruling party were present in this particular ceremony.

Speaker 12 President Samia Sulu Hasser is speaking, saying that the time for elections is over and it's time to rebuild, saying that she's ready to serve the country, but also said that she's saddened by the loss of life and destruction of property that has been witnessed since last week on Wednesday when Tanzanians went to the polls and also said that among those who've been arrested for disrupting security and the unrest were people from neighboring countries.

Speaker 12 Very interesting and strong lines coming out of her speech, but she said she's ready to work for people of Tanzania from now henceforth.

Speaker 3 We'll come on to the future and rebuilding the country in a second. First of all, they've got to get through today without further violence.

Speaker 12 Of course, because there's been tension in Tanzania since Wednesday during Poll Day, and that disputed election was followed by mass protests in the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam and other parts of the country.

Speaker 12 A brutal crackdown followed, and the opposition is putting the death toll from that crackdown at about 700 to 800.

Speaker 12 Of course, reports that we are unable to verify because Tanzania has been in total internet blackout since Wednesday.

Speaker 12 Electricity was also disrupted for the better part of the days and was only just restored yesterday. So it's been very difficult to get information out of there.

Speaker 12 But the opposition still says they reject this particular election results and are calling on the International Criminal Court to begin conducting independent investigations into the alleged mass killings.

Speaker 12 So it's just day one, but the president seemingly will have a full entry and especially when it comes to public interests and confidence in her leadership.

Speaker 3 And will she be able to rule effectively after all that's gone on?

Speaker 12 Well, it's going to be difficult because she's coming in at a time when there are very deep divisions in Tanzania.

Speaker 12 Regardless of the fact that the Electoral Commission said she won by 98% of the vote, which translates to about 32 million people, it will be interesting to see how she is received by the people from the comments we are seeing on social media platforms and general reactions we are seeing from Tanzanians.

Speaker 12 They seem to feel that the democratic processes in this country are not working right now and that so many things have gone wrong even before this particular election.

Speaker 12 You're talking about repression of free speech, a crackdown on critics like opposition leaders, activists. We've seen mass abductions and killings.

Speaker 12 And these are some of the things that have dogged her presidencies and will likely follow her into this second term.

Speaker 3 Akisa Wandera with me from Nairobi. For more than a year, the head of the region of Valencia in eastern Spain has been under pressure to resign.

Speaker 3 It's over his handling of the response to the devastating flash flooding that killed more than 230 people in October last year.

Speaker 3 There's been a series of protests in Valencia, and on the first anniversary of the disaster, tens of thousands of people held a demonstration calling for Carlos Mathon to resign. On Monday, Mr.

Speaker 3 Mathon bowed to that pressure and stepped down as the regional leader. I spoke to our correspondent in Madrid, Guy Hedgeco.

Speaker 13 There has been enormous pressure on Mr. Mathon over the last year.
There have been protests held in the streets of Valencia every month demanding his resignation.

Speaker 13 The most recent one just last weekend when 50,000 people or so turned out to demand his resignation.

Speaker 13 Now for a long time it looked as if he was going to resist that pressure and just keep going but I think last week was a turning point because we had this memorial service for the victims

Speaker 13 of the the floods last year, just last week and when he appeared at the memorial service he was barracked and shouted at by relatives of the victims.

Speaker 13 Some of them were calling him a murderer, calling him a coward. And he did look really shaken by that.

Speaker 13 And there was very much a feeling that that event perhaps was a turning point and had caused him to think twice about his position, having resisted so long.

Speaker 13 And also, his People's Party, the Conservative Party, which he's a member of, also seriously seemed to consider his position as well.

Speaker 3 And just remind us of what happened, the flooding, but also what was considered to be a pretty botched response to the flooding, which led to all those deaths.

Speaker 13 Yes, these were floods that hit the east of Spain, in particular the eastern region of Valencia. Almost all the deaths, 229 deaths, were in the region of Valencia.

Speaker 13 There were several other deaths in other neighbouring regions, but it was Valencia that was hardest hit.

Speaker 13 Many people were caught out in their cars or out in the streets or in ground floor flats, for example, or in basements and garages, and that was where many of these victims were caught and died.

Speaker 13 And it emerged afterwards that Mr.

Speaker 13 Mathon had really not been present, he'd not been at his office, he'd not been at emergency meetings that day because he was having a long, almost four-hour lunch with a journalist in a restaurant that day, so he was missing emergency meetings.

Speaker 13 And also, his administration, when it did issue finally an emergency alarm to people's phone, it was several hours too late. And by that time, dozens of people had already died.

Speaker 3 Guy Hedgeco in Madrid. The ceasefire in Gaza is still holding, and that's despite recriminations between Israel and Hamas and Israeli airstrikes last week.

Speaker 3 The next steps, though, including the arrival of an international stabilization force, the disarmament of Hamas, and the withdrawal of Israeli forces, still seem some way off.

Speaker 3 Even further off, the prospect of Gaza being rebuilt. That process is likely to take decades and cost billions of dollars.

Speaker 3 But it's already something planners, Palestinian and international, are thinking about.

Speaker 3 From homegrown projects to glossy international investment opportunities, there's a bewildering array of proposals. Our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams has been looking at some of them.

Speaker 14 The bulldozers are hard at work, shoveling rubble into waiting trucks. After two years of destruction, the clean-up has begun.

Speaker 14 Parts of Gaza City are disfigured beyond recognition. If the ceasefire holds, recovery can start.
But it's not going to be quick. It could take a generation.

Speaker 14 This was my house, says Abu Yad, pointing to a mangled heap of concrete and steel in Gaza's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. It was here, but there's no house left.

Speaker 3 He's 63.

Speaker 14 If Gaza ever rises from the ashes, he doesn't expect to be around to see it.

Speaker 3 At this rate, I think it will take 10 years. We'll be dead.
We'll die without seeing reconstruction.

Speaker 14 The scale of the challenge is mind-boggling. The UN estimates the cost of damage at $70 billion.

Speaker 14 The Gaza Strip is littered with 60 million tons of rubble mixed in with dangerous unexploded bombs and dead bodies. Almost 300,000 houses and apartments have been damaged or destroyed.

Speaker 15 This is the heart of the city of Gaza.

Speaker 14 Gaza's Hamas-appointed mayor, Yahya Al-Saraj, is on the streets today wearing a high-viz jacket, surveying the ruins of his city.

Speaker 14 Gaza is no stranger to destruction and recovery, but the work has hardly started.

Speaker 15 We lack building materials. We badly need 1,000 tons of cement to start many jobs to repair manholes, and we need heavy equipment, we need vehicles, we need spare parts for everything.

Speaker 14 Tell me me what we're looking at here.

Speaker 16 Well, this is the Palestine National Spatial Plan.

Speaker 14 There's no shortage of plans at the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Speaker 14 Stefan Salameh, the planning minister, pulls up his government's official version on a big plasma screen. Gaza will look different, he says, but some things have to stay the same.

Speaker 16 Don't forget that 70% of the Gaza's population are Palestinian refugees. And we need to preserve the refugee identity.
We need to preserve the soul and the spirit of Gaza.

Speaker 16 It would not be rebuilt the way it was before, but it could be rebuilt in the way that the Palestinian identity and the spirit of our people in Gaza can be preserved.

Speaker 14 There are, of course, other visions. Donald Trump famously posted this outlandish spoof on his social media account back in February.

Speaker 11 Donald is coming to set you free, bringing the light for all to see.

Speaker 14 But a leaked plan published more recently in The Washington Post painted a similarly glossy vision of a high-tech Gaza Strip under US trusteeship.

Speaker 14 The Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust, GREAT for short, was said to be the work of Israeli and American consultants with input from members of Tony Blair's Institute for Global Change.

Speaker 14 It's the kind of vision that alarms Palestinians. Raja Khaladi runs the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute.

Speaker 9 I think what I'm saying is that these sort of

Speaker 9 almost hallucinatory plans are just sort of creating an opening for disaster capitalism that is worrying. And I don't think that, you know, I don't think they're going to get away with it.

Speaker 14 Gaza is not a blank slate waiting to be turned into Dubai. Shelly Culbertson, a senior researcher with the RAND think tank, says rebuilding will take many forms.

Speaker 4 Living in the damaged but habitable communities and rebuilding while in them, we think, is going to be a key way of preserving communities and allowing people to move back.

Speaker 4 At the same time, you can't do that with all the communities.

Speaker 4 Some places have been so destroyed and damaged and dangerous that the only thing to do really is wall them off, raise them down and completely rebuild.

Speaker 14 The Gaza Strip already has a Riviera, stretches of beach where exhausted, traumatized Palestinians can briefly look away from the horror.

Speaker 14 Reconstruction, the plans, and who intends to pay for it all are due to be discussed at a conference in Egypt later this month. But a date has yet to be set.

Speaker 14 Right now, a new Gaza feels a very long way off.

Speaker 3 That report from our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams. Next to Sudan.

Speaker 3 Since the paramilitary rapid support forces, the RSF, seized the city of El-Fasha, the last stronghold of the army in the Darfur region more than a week ago, tens of thousands of people are believed to have fled.

Speaker 3 International aid agencies are warning that thousands more remain trapped in the city amid reports of executions, sexual violence, and looting.

Speaker 3 Many are trying to reach Tawila, where aid agencies are offering help.

Speaker 3 Eyewitnesses say some have been killed by the RSF, while others, especially young men suspected of belonging to the Sudanese army, have been captured and abused.

Speaker 3 Here's our correspondent, Barbara Pletusher.

Speaker 17 Any man suspected of being a member of the army is held back. Some of them are beaten, some of them are killed, some of them are detained, apparently some held for ransom.

Speaker 17 One man told us that when he was trying to leave Al-Fashar, he said he had nothing to do with the army, but one of the RSF fighters said to the other, all of these people, all of them, all people who escaped from Al-Fashar are the army, all of them, kill them.

Speaker 3 Noah Taylor is the head of operations in Sudan for the Norwegian Refugee Council. He spoke to me from Nairobi.

Speaker 11 We have teams in Tewila, which is about 60 kilometers outside of Al-Fasha. They're receiving people who've arrived from the city in recent days.

Speaker 11 and the testimony from these people and from local responders that we've worked with in Al-Fasha is incredibly grim. It's a very tense situation.
It's violent. They describe summary executions.

Speaker 11 They describe armed men going door to door and looking for people. And this is a city that has been under siege for over 18 months.
So there is no food.

Speaker 11 People have described buying a bucket of animal feed to feed their children for 30 US dollars. This is incredibly violent.
It's incredibly grim. It's incredibly worrying.

Speaker 11 Those who do get out manage to get to Tewila, and they're the ones that are escaping these arrests, this harassment, and these executions. It's incredibly desperate.

Speaker 3 And just to underline for people listening, although this has been going on, as you say, for 18 months or more, in recent days, the situation in El Fashia has changed considerably.

Speaker 11 Yeah, this latest violence has been exacerbated by a significant escalation of attacks from the rapid support forces on Sudan forces and joint forces in the city.

Speaker 11 That's definitely what has contributed to this recent spike in violence. But this is a situation that has been grinding on for months.

Speaker 3 And although there has been a fair bit of news reporting in recent days, it often slips down the news agenda in a way which I'm sure is frustrating for people like yourself working on the ground there.

Speaker 11 The scale of the crisis in wider Sudan is incredibly distressing. We're talking about 25 million people.
That's more than half the population that are food insecure.

Speaker 11 That's up from a 45% increase from December 2023. So this situation is getting exponentially worse.
We've had cholera outbreaks across across the country this year.

Speaker 11 We've had flooding in the east of the country and now this repetitive grinding violence in cities like Al-Fasha and in Kadoogli in the south where civilians are not protected.

Speaker 11 They are deliberately targeted. Aid organisations and local responders are targeted and there is no respite from the war.

Speaker 3 What needs to happen, Noah, to bring the violence to an end, but also to get aid to the people who need it?

Speaker 11 Well, fundamentally, we need access. We need access to people in need.
We need unrestricted movement to get goods and commodities into the people who need it.

Speaker 11 And people themselves, the civilians, need protection. They need protection to leave these war zones to get to where assistance is provided and to do so safely and dignified.

Speaker 11 But fundamentally, the people of Sudan need an end to this war, and they need political will from actors like the UK to actually bring those accountable to justice and actually push for an end to this madness.

Speaker 3 Noah Taylor, head of operations in Sudan, for the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Speaker 3 Still to come, one of Britain's best-known actors shares one of his darkest moments.

Speaker 18 I was driving my car in a complete alcoholic blackout, and I could have killed someone. I was out of control, and I said to somebody, I need help, and I made the phone call.

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Speaker 3 Now, let's go back to events in Victoria Park in Hong Kong in 2018.

Speaker 3 More than 100,000 people gathered to hold a candle-lit vigil to mark the 29th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing.

Speaker 3 The event was held every year until 2020 when it was banned by China. Now, a court in Hong Kong has ruled that three people who are accused of organising the demonstrations will face trial.

Speaker 3 Mickey Bristow, tell me more.

Speaker 21 Yeah, these protests were, as you mentioned, there to commemorate the 1989 killings of students and ordinary people, protesters in Beijing who'd been arguing for more openness, more democracy in the Chinese government.

Speaker 21 The government sent in the military and many people were killed-hundreds, perhaps thousands. Now, in China itself, I was reporting in China for many years.
I never saw any commemoration of that event.

Speaker 21 The only place it could take place was in Hong Kong, because at the time, Hong Kong was under British rule, and then even afterwards, it was still open, it was still free.

Speaker 21 You know, under Chinese rule, they were still allowed to commemorate and mark that particular event. And it's not just marking it as well, it's remembering it because in China,

Speaker 21 there's no word of it ever spoken, no it's never taught in schools, no mention of it. So, Hong Kong was really the only place you could remember and commemorate this event.

Speaker 3 So, if it was allowed in Hong Kong at that time, why are the authorities pursuing those who organised it now?

Speaker 21 Well, what happened is there were protests throughout the 2010s in Hong Kong. The authorities decided to crack down and it coincided with the

Speaker 21 Covid pandemic in twenty twenty. That's what the authorities said initially was their reason for not allowing these commemorations to take place.

Speaker 21 But in the same year, the Chinese government brought in a national security law in Hong Kong, which is severely cracked down, completely almost, on dissent in the former British territory.

Speaker 21 And since then, there have been no commemorations have been allowed.

Speaker 21 This court case, particularly taking place now, is about today it was three people who are going to be standing trial for organizing events to commemorate this Tiananmen protest and essentially they were saying that they shouldn't go forward to trial because they've been accused of inciting subversion of state power by unformal unlawful means and they were saying well what are the unfortunate means we took to do this.

Speaker 21 Essentially the judge said basically any attempt to end the one party rule is considered unconstitutional so therefore any means is unlawful.

Speaker 21 So therefore their trial will go ahead in January next year.

Speaker 3 Right, and this is in the broader context of almost no dissent being allowed in Hong Kong at all now.

Speaker 21 No dissent at all, really, in Hong Kong. In fact, one of the three defendants standing trial, she's been in prison already for four years.

Speaker 21 She was arrested and put in prison for simply urging people to light candles on June the 4th to commemorate these Tiananmen killings.

Speaker 21 So, if that's the level of repression you've got, there's really no protest allowed in Hong Kong at the moment.

Speaker 3 Mickey Bristow reporting.

Speaker 3 In 2019, British MPs said universities in the UK were failing to recognise the level of interference from foreign government, and their report highlighted concerns about the influence of China in particular.

Speaker 3 New documents seen by the BBC show that China waged a two-year campaign of intimidation against Sheffield Hallam University in the north of England in an effort to close down research into human rights abuses.

Speaker 3 The target was an academic called Laura Murphy, a professor of human rights and contemporary slavery.

Speaker 22 Last April, we started to hear news that the Chinese government, the Foreign Intelligence Agency, was intimidating and harassing and interrogating the staff that the university has in Beijing.

Speaker 22 And the university let me know that this was happening and that, in fact, it appeared that the Chinese state security wanted me to stop doing our research.

Speaker 22 At the time, the university backed us and said we could continue the research.

Speaker 22 But over the next couple of months, it was clear that that influence grew from the state security service to the university, and the university became more and more committed to ending my research team's work entirely.

Speaker 3 Professor Murphy's work focuses on Uyghurs, a persecuted Muslim minority in China being co-opted into forced labor programs. China denies allegations of human rights abuses.

Speaker 3 Our correspondent, Damian Grammaticus, told me more.

Speaker 1 It started with their website in China being unavailable, so Chinese students looking to apply to Sheffield couldn't find information about courses, couldn't do applications, couldn't complete that process.

Speaker 1 And they did see internal emails that have been handed over to the researcher who was behind some of the research happening, to Laura Murphy, show that student numbers dropped over that period.

Speaker 1 The university was concerned about it. And in 2024,

Speaker 1 those emails say that some Chinese state security officers visited Sheffield Hallam's recruitment office in Beijing, that their tone was threatening.

Speaker 1 They told staff there that the research had to stop.

Speaker 1 And then the university then came back and delivered a message to the security staff that they had decided not to publish a final report by Professor Murphy's unit.

Speaker 1 And those internal documents said that after that, relations immediately improved.

Speaker 3 And just give us a sense of what China have said about this, what the university have said themselves.

Speaker 1 Yes, so importantly, what China have said is that this is unfounded allegations. They push back very strongly.

Speaker 1 They say that this unit at Sheffield Hallam University says has released multiple fake reports on Xinjiang that are seriously flawed.

Speaker 1 The university itself, they have come out and said that the decision that was taken not to continue with the research was, they say, based on understanding of a complex set of circumstances at the time, including being unable to secure the necessary professional indemnity insurance for their research.

Speaker 1 And the university did make clear that they have now said that Professor Murphy can resume her research and they are committed to supporting her academic freedom.

Speaker 3 The leverage that the Chinese state has here is the value of Chinese students to universities in the UK and other countries around the world.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. And there are Chinese students that are the largest cohort in the UK.
There are 200,000 at the minute, the Chinese embassy says, and that is a very valuable source of foreign income.

Speaker 1 And it's certainly a concern, I think, in parts of the UK government, the vulnerability of universities then who could be exposed to such pressure.

Speaker 3 And Damien, you're a former BBC China correspondent.

Speaker 3 Just set the wider context for us of how China can look for organisations around the world, be they universities or whatever, whatever, and apply pressure like this. It's quite a common accusation.

Speaker 1 It is, and China certainly tries to wield pressure in many ways. So, work as a journalist in China, you come under a lot of pressure.

Speaker 1 Certainly, commercial companies operating in China or dealing with China sometimes will say, very often not publicly, but will say that they face pressure in all sorts of ways because China is willing to wield the sort of access to its market as a tool of influence.

Speaker 3 Our correspondent Damien Gramaticus with me. Leaders from around the world are flying to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil for the start of COP30, the climate summit.

Speaker 3 It's now just five years from 2030 when countries are expected to meet their pledges they made in 2015 to limit rising temperatures. So, what can we expect from this meeting?

Speaker 3 Is the fact that it's being held in the Amazon significant? Let's hear from Cass Flynn, who's the UN Development Programme's Global Director of Climate Change.

Speaker 23 It's hugely significant. The Amazon rainforest, of course, is the enormous symbol for the climate crisis.
And not to mention the reality that when we think about the lungs of the world,

Speaker 23 this is the Amazon, and who cares for the Amazon? It is often safeguarded by indigenous peoples, by local communities that have an enormous role on the front lines of the climate crisis.

Speaker 23 And so I think for the government of Brazil to be gathering the world at the Amazon, it is hugely poignant for everyone because they really are coming to talk about the climate crisis on the front lines of the climate crisis.

Speaker 5 Aaron Powell, there are some things that have been overshadowing the geography of it, though, as well. You use the word symbol.

Speaker 5 I mean, how symbolic is it, for example, that Brazil's President Lula has been criticised for giving the thumbs up for plans for more drilling of oil in the Amazon and also the cutting down of trees in order to build this new road, a four-lane highway, so that the area can be accessible for all the delegates who are going to be coming to Belum, the area that is being held in the Amazon for COB.

Speaker 23 It's really, and we share, you know, the United Nations Secretary General expressed sort of immense disappointment at the idea of being able to drill in the Amazon.

Speaker 23 And I think that it symbolizes the difficulties and the choices that world leaders and countries have to make when it comes to the climate crisis, because these decisions are not easy and

Speaker 23 they are not simple and they affect every single person in every single community in the world.

Speaker 23 And certainly we hope that world leaders sort of rise to this occasion and

Speaker 23 hopeful that as countries really start to transition away from fossil fuels, that they're going to direct this level of investment in ways that are strategic

Speaker 23 and better for the world.

Speaker 23 But certainly, I think that the, as you say, kind of the symbol of having this in Bilai is also the symbol of the complexity of how these leaders are responding to this crisis.

Speaker 5 Aaron Powell, over the past 10 years,

Speaker 5 by several measures, it can be argued that everything that was agreed 10 years ago in Paris in 2015, countries haven't met some of the agreements that had been made,

Speaker 5 namely to be on track to keep global temperatures below a rising of 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. So how hopeful can we be of what can be achieved 10 years since Paris?

Speaker 23 When we adopted the Paris Agreement 10 years ago, there was this immense hope that very quickly we would be on the pathway toward meeting those goals that we set out for ourselves and namely this what has now become this threshold of 1.5 degrees.

Speaker 23 And

Speaker 23 I certainly something that is important about all of this is that when we do cooperate on the climate crisis, that that cooperation does pay off.

Speaker 23 And without the Paris Agreement, we would be headed for a four-degree world, which would be just utterly devastating.

Speaker 3 It's Cass Flynn talking to my colleague Priya Roy.

Speaker 3 Anthony Hopkins is one of the the finest actors of our age. A two-time Oscar winner, he's now written an autobiography called We Did Okay Kid.

Speaker 3 It's a story about his extraordinary journey from Port Talbot, the town in Wales where he grew up, to Hollywood. And it is a journey paved with pain, rejection, and alcohol.

Speaker 3 Our culture editor Katie Razzle met the actor in Los Angeles.

Speaker 6 Even in Los Angeles, Sir Anthony Hopkins gets noticed.

Speaker 20 I guess that happens all the time.

Speaker 18 Actors are special, but not at all.

Speaker 6 Looking back on his life, as he publishes his autobiography, he tells me he's pragmatic.

Speaker 18 Life is tough. Enjoy it now before it's too late.
Just enjoy it as much as you can. Don't be a victim.

Speaker 6 As a child, he was a loner who was bullied at school. Kids called him elephant head.
He was written off and slapped around by teachers. Even his parents couldn't understand their failure of a son.

Speaker 18 I was not bright. I was not the brightest piece of cattle in the drawer.
So what I did to compensate my academic shortcomings, I would learn massive pieces of poetry and Shakespeare.

Speaker 18 Then the turning point was in 1955, I was 17, my school reporters arrived and it was pretty bleak. Anthony seems to be way below the educational standard of the school.
And my father, with all good

Speaker 18 intentions, said, I don't know what's going to happen to you, what's going to happen to you? I mean, can't you concentrate? And I remember stepping back and I said, one day I'll show you.

Speaker 18 And within a few months, I got a scholarship as an actor.

Speaker 6 This son of a baker's film career took off immediately from his debut playing a future king in Hawarth Productions, The Lion in Winter.

Speaker 18 I remember the very first scene I had with Catherine Happen.

Speaker 24 Now I've only one desire left, to see you king.

Speaker 24 The only thing you want to see is father's vitals on the bed of letters.

Speaker 18 She said, just speak the lines. Just don't act.
Just do it. And I took that advice.

Speaker 6 And as Hannibal Lecter, the role that won him his first Oscar in The Silence of the Lambs, directed by Jonathan Demi, he was bone-chilling.

Speaker 18 Closer.

Speaker 18 The more still you are and deadly, and don't take your eyes off the person.

Speaker 18 That's terrifying.

Speaker 6 Despite his success, he had his own demons. He was regularly drunk and angry until he had an epiphany.

Speaker 18 December 1975, I was driving my car in a complete alcoholic blackout and I could have killed killed someone. I was out of control.
And I said to somebody, I need help, and I made the phone call.

Speaker 18 The craving left. I should never come back.

Speaker 6 What are your biggest regrets?

Speaker 18 People have hurt over the years. The stupid things they did.
In the British Army, I was screamed at by sergeants and trainers, you know.

Speaker 18 So you withdraw into yourself, think, okay, you can't hurt me, can you? That's how I think I developed my own personality. Of course, it's not the healthiest way to go through life.

Speaker 18 Ah, that's a bit sharp.

Speaker 6 Not many can say they've had a private piano recital from Anthony Hopkins. He played us one of his own compositions.
This talented musician, artist, and actor seems, at 87, contented. Yeah, I am.

Speaker 18 So I hope to be around a little longer. But even that, I'm thinking, oh, well,

Speaker 18 I had a good time. I had a laugh.

Speaker 3 Our culture editor Katie Razzle with Anthony Hopkins in Los Angeles.

Speaker 3 That's all from us for now. There'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later.

Speaker 3 If you'd like to comment on this one, drop us an email, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk, or go to X where we are at BBC World Service. Just use the hashtag global news pod.

Speaker 3 This edition was mixed by Chris O'Blackwa. The producer was Ed Horton.
The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach.
Thanks for listening. And until next time, goodbye.

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Speaker 25 It blocks extra carbs and sugars before your body gets them, adds fiber your gut actually loves, and keeps your blood sugar from roller coaster. So yeah, I still eat the pasta.

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