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

Widely regarded as the greatest entrance in film history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

A young FBI agent, a rookie, must walk the line of detention units until she reaches Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. There he stands, with features like a living skull exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move right up until he lunges against the glass, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless true-crime documentaries have since shown that actual serial killers tend to be quite dull, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

He was not a newcomer upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in the 1991 thriller in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was forged. The character of Hannibal was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, from Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader as recalled by his daughter, and on his own icily exacting drama teacher Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a painful subject for the actor, who further explains how his King Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and drinking.

The title originates from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He appeared lost, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a bread-maker and man's man, a straightforward talker who despised the religious hypocrites at the church and avoided showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who was angered by the necessity of going begging to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. He was a poor student at his new school. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school without much hope, went into acting, and shocking his family, was acting with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time scholarships existed to go to Rada – a path to success for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: upon requesting his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and burst into tears.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a fit of pique – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which led indirectly to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. He stopped drinking in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and thus made it into his later years to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson featuring Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. A few tales fall a bit flat. He mentions being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in the film Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated by jealousy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Quite so. But he also recounts confronting an obnoxious director who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. Should you ever act that way near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with a lengthy appendix composed simply