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

It stands as the most memorable introduction in film history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, proceeds down the line of detention units until she reaches the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. He is positioned, his face resembling an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still in his form-fitting blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless right up until he lunges against the glass, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since revealed that real-life murderers are often very boring, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly unrecognized upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but rather a megastar was forged. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, the actor happily remembers in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his icily exacting Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a sore point for the actor, who also describes how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by deep-seated remorse about Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union back in 1966 to his first wife, who disliked his absences and his drinking habits.

The title originates from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He appeared lost, shy and fragile youth from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a pastry chef and man's man, a direct communicator who loathed the religious hypocrites in their community and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. His father who was angered by the necessity of going humbly to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves while traveling there. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. However, one day in an English lesson he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other students. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He more or less did it on his own, even though back then there were grants for drama school – a path to success for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and began crying.

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 series QB VII, which eventually resulted to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he preferred over theater. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s after being a heavy drinker, and so survived into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the latter half of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more studied. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He recalls being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Is that so?

He often portrays the grounded, serious thespian who maintains you must to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Quite so. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. Should you ever act that way near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as an individual who stopped drinking but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. An actor of his caliber is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with a lengthy appendix composed simply