Long before Hannibal Lecter, the Oscars and a knighthood, a young Anthony Hopkins stood in a Kent village church and got married.
Petronella Barker was born near Sittingbourne in 1942 into an acting family. Her father was comedy performer Eric Barker and her mother was stage and screen actress Pearl Hackney.
Petronella followed them into acting and, in 1966, met a rising Welsh actor named Anthony Hopkins.
The couple married on 2 September 1966 at St Mary's Church in the small Kent village of Stalisfield. Hopkins was twenty-eight and Petronella was twenty-four.
Their daughter Abigail was born in 1968.
The marriage ended in divorce in 1972. Hopkins later spoke openly about difficulties in that period of his life and his regret over the estrangement from his daughter.
His career, of course, went on to extraordinary heights. He won an Academy Award for The Silence of the Lambs, another for The Father and was knighted for services to drama.
Yet tucked into the story of one of the world's most famous actors is a quiet Kent chapter: a wedding in a village church near Sittingbourne.
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