We Did OK, Kid: A Memoir by Anthony Hopkins – Review: A Legend with a Temper

Many consider it the most memorable entrance in movie lore – while he stands completely still.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, navigates a row of prison cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. The man is present, his face resembling a living skull filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless until the moment he lunges at the barrier, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous real-crime films have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are often very boring, lacking anything like the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the iconic film back in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar emerged. His Dr. Lecter was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own rigorously precise drama teacher Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a difficult topic for Hopkins, who recounts how his King Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret about Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who resented him being away and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He appeared lost, shy and fragile youth from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure here: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a direct communicator who loathed the religious hypocrites in their community and avoided expressing his feelings, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who was angered by the way they had to go begging to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The humility worked, for a time. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. However, one day during an English class he was required to perform John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he shocked the educator and the other students. He convincingly states that poems, alone, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school a no-hoper, entered the acting world, and shocking his family, was on stage with the great Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days scholarships existed to go to Rada – a path to success for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but stumbled upon a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, that he favored to the stage. He stopped drinking back in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and managed to live into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, including Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Certain stories aren't entirely successful. He mentions having lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for Anthony to gain insight advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who believes you must to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Indeed. However, he also describes facing a rude director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink yet perhaps not the aggression that came with it. An actor of his caliber surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply