Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins, who has played Hitler, Hannibal Lecter and Captain Bligh, says it was a joy to lighten up for his latest movie, the tale of a speed-hungry senior citizen who became a racing legend. “The World’s Fastest Indian”stars Hopkins as New Zealand folk hero Burt Munro, who when in his 60s began setting world speed records on his 1920 Indian motorcycle.

The movie received a standing ovation at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday evening, where it was screened for the first time outside of its native New Zealand. The film tells the story of Munro’s journey from his hometown to Utah’s famed Bonneville salt flats, where his ability to set speed records surprised everyone but himself.

Hopkins said he jumped at the chance to play the somewhat eccentric character, partly because he shares Munro’s philosophy that “if you don’t live your dreams you may as well become a vegetable,” he said. “I believe that. I’ve always believed that. If you don’t act your life with energy and assume happiness and assume challenges, you may as well be dead. Trust your dreams, I can say,” he told Reuters on Sunday.

The Welsh actor said he also was keen to be reunited with Australian-born Roger Donaldson, who directed him more than two decades earlier in “The Bounty”. Ironically, the two clashed bitterly on that film. Yet Hopkins now considers him one of the best directors he’s ever worked with. Said Donaldson said with a laugh: “We had a very tempestuous time. We were ready to kill each other. It was really great for me personally to realise that it could change from that.” The film marks the end of a 30-year odyssey for Donaldson, who first got the idea for “The World’s Fastest Indian» after making a 1971 documentary on Munro called “Offerings to the God of Speed”.