Anthony Hopkins has taken aim at Paris Hilton and the current crop of celebrity socialites, comparing them to "soulless machines". The Silence of the Lambs actor is fed up with skinny models and stars on the red carpet who lack substance - and he's singled out the heiress for appearing to have nothing "going on up there."

He rants, "We're living in a pretty strange time. I went into a shop to buy my wife some clothes and I wanted them gift-wrapped. And they had this big plasma screen on with these women on the catwalk. I thought, 'God almighty, what have we become?' These girls - anorexic, walking like machines, no soul."

"You look at fashion magazines and you think, 'What are we living in?' You look at the red carpet, Paris Hilton, you know, these people and you think, 'Is there anything going on up there?' It's a mass enslavement and it's kind of fascism. And it's the androgyny of it; the androgyny of the human soul. I don't think people think any more. But maybe I'm just old."