We Did OK, Kid: A Memoir by Anthony Hopkins – Insights: A Legend with a Temper

It stands as the most memorable appearance in cinematic history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, navigates the line of detention units until she reaches the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. He is positioned, his face resembling a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He stands frozen before suddenly he propels himself toward the window, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A multitude of real-crime films have since revealed that real-life murderers are often very boring, lacking anything like Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: a star wasn't born, instead, a superstar was forged. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader as recalled by his daughter, and on his own strictly demanding drama teacher his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a painful subject for Anthony, who further explains how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse concerning Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage in 1966 to his first wife, who was angered by his absences and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He appeared lost, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a baker and man's man, a direct communicator who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who deeply disliked the necessity of going begging to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with Nye Bevan and was able to secure young Anthony into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. Then, during in an English lesson he had to recite the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He reasonably claims that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, entered the acting world, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time there were grants to attend Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role as a suspected war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. He stopped drinking in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and so survived into middle age to execute great performances, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of the memoir he appears more reserved, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He mentions having lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who wanted to tell him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Really?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it's your duty to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Quite so. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way 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 Shakespearean like him must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply