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

It stands as the most iconic appearance in movie lore – and he remains without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, just starting out, proceeds down a corridor of cells arriving at Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, with features like an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move before suddenly he propels himself at the barrier, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since revealed that real-life murderers are often very boring, with nothing resembling Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in the iconic film back in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar was cemented. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own rigorously precise acting coach Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a paternal-filial aspect within the narrative; a sore point for Anthony, who further explains how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse concerning Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked him being away and his alcohol use.

The title originates from an historical picture of Hopkins as a toddler playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a baker and man's man, a straightforward talker who detested the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and didn't believe in showing his emotions, but also exhibited nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked how they were forced begging to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. But one day in a literature class he had to recite the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – sight unseen – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He says quite plausibly that poetry, on its own, launched him. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time there were grants for drama school – a way up for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – much to Olivier's disappointment and disapproval – but fortunately found an excellent television part playing an alleged war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career on screen, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the latter half of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He mentions being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for him to absorb something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Not really. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Really?

He often portrays the grounded, serious thespian who maintains it is one's responsibility to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Absolutely. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. An actor of his caliber must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply