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

It stands as the most memorable entrance in film history – while he stands utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, proceeds down a row of prison cells until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's transparent prison. There he stands, appearing as a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless right up until he lunges at the barrier, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since revealed that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling the actor's captivating film persona.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized at the time he got the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: a star wasn't born, but rather a megastar emerged. His portrayal of Lecter was based, the actor happily remembers in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and also from his icily exacting acting coach his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a difficult topic for Hopkins, who recounts how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who disliked him being away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from an historical picture of a young Hopkins with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure here: a baker and man's man, a direct communicator who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and didn't believe in showing his emotions, but had a streak of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who deeply disliked the way they had to go humbly to their rich relatives such as Aunt Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The humility worked, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically at the prestigious school. But one day during an English class he had to recite the poem by Masefield The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and the other students. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated without much hope, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was acting with the great Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then there were grants for drama school – an opportunity for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but fortunately found a great TV role as a suspected war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey on screen, that he favored to the stage. He stopped drinking back in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of his autobiography his character seems more elusive, more deliberate. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He remembers going out for lunch with his fellow actor in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor from Goodfellas? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Truly?

He often portrays the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who believes you must to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Absolutely. But he also recounts confronting an obnoxious director who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply