Anthony Hopkins' Memoir: We Did OK, Kid – Review: An Icon with a Temper

Widely regarded as the most iconic appearance in movie lore – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, navigates a row of prison cells finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's transparent prison. The man is present, appearing as an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless before suddenly he throws himself against the glass, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous real-crime films have since demonstrated that real-life murderers are often very boring, lacking anything like the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer upon receiving the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: he was already established, but a legend was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was based, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and on his own strictly demanding drama teacher his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a paternal-filial aspect in these moments; a painful subject for the actor, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who resented his time away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from an historical picture of a young Hopkins on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in this story: a baker and a tough individual, a direct communicator who loathed the religious hypocrites at the church and didn't believe in showing his emotions, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. His father who was angered by the necessity of going humbly to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and was able to secure young Anthony into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The humility worked, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. However, one day during an English class he had to recite the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that verse, by itself, started his career. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school without much hope, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic within 10 years. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time there were grants for drama school – an opportunity for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Regarding the fiery, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – much to Olivier's disappointment and criticism – but fortunately found a memorable TV character as a suspected war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and managed to live into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He remembers being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who sought to advise him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Really?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks you must to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Indeed. But he also recounts facing a rude director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A classical performer like Hopkins must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a detailed supplement composed simply