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

It stands as the greatest introduction in movie lore – yet the actor stays completely still.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, navigates a corridor of cells finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, with features like a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He stands frozen until the moment he lunges against the glass, emitting that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, far from Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not unrecognized upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: a star wasn't born, but a legend was forged. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and also from his rigorously precise drama teacher Christopher Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a difficult topic for the actor, who also describes how his Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage during the 60s with Petronella Barker, who disliked his time away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He felt confused, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a plain speaker who loathed the religious hypocrites at the church and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who furiously resented the necessity of going humbly to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and could get the young Anthony into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. But one day during an English class he had to recite the verse by John Masefield The West Wind – sight unseen – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, started his career. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time scholarships existed to go to Rada – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Regarding the fiery, strong-willed son, he left the National Theatre in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but lucked into an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, which he liked more to the stage. He stopped drinking back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of the memoir he appears more reserved, more deliberate. Certain stories fall a bit flat. He remembers being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven by jealousy. Really?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who maintains it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Quite so. But he also recounts confronting an obnoxious 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! Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. An actor of his caliber must know Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A straightforward and sincere nature – he always tells the truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a lengthy appendix composed simply