The Hollywood legend Anthony Hopkins is currently garnering Oscar buzz for his work in the movie The Father, in which he plays an elderly man with dementia who is being cared for by his daughter, who is played by Olivia Colman.

“It felt very second nature to me,” Hopkins, 83, said of the role.

Unfortunately, real life often does not imitate art. In reality, Hopkins has been estranged from his only child, 52 year-old Abigail Hopkins, for the past twenty years.

“People break up. Families split. People make choices,” Hopkins said of the situation, according to Closer Weekly.

Hopkins divorced Abigail’s mother, Petronella Barker, in 1972. He began heavily drinking from then until he got sober in 1975, and he only saw his daughter once a year during that period.

“He doesn’t blame her. He takes full responsibility,” a friend of the actor’s said.

Abigail reached out to Hopkins after he won his Oscar for The Silence Of The Lambs in 1991, and they were able to reconcile. Over the next few years, he brought her to movie premieres and got her small parts in films like The Remains of the Day and Shadowlands. Reports state that Hopkins even helped Abigail buy an apartment.

However, this all ended up being a little too little too late for Abigail, who still could not forgive her father for years of what she saw as abandonment.

“I came very close to killing myself,” Abigail said in 2006, referring to her teenage years. “The root cause was the fact that my father and I had an intermittent relationship when I was young. I was angry and there was a lot of grieving.”

A friend of the family’s said that one of the biggest issues here is that Hopkins and Abigail are too similar, explaining, “They are both very stubborn.”

After years of Abigail being angry, Hopkins now is the one feeling rejected.

“Children don’t like their fathers,” he said. “You don’t have to love each other.”

Despite this, friends are still hoping that Hopkins and Abigail will try to mend their relationship someday.

“It’s a tough situation for both,” said one friend. “[Hopkins] can be very blunt, [but] he is also one of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever met.”