Exploring Anthony Hopkins' Autobiography We Did OK, Kid – Analysis: A Legend Known for His Fiery Nature

Widely regarded as the greatest entrance in film history – and he remains utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, proceeds down a corridor of cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. He is positioned, with features like a living skull radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still wearing a snug prisoner's blue outfit. He remains motionless until the moment he propels himself toward the window, producing that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous documentaries on serial killers have since shown that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

He was not an unknown at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: he was already established, but a legend was cemented. The character of Hannibal was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own icily exacting Rada tutor Christopher Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a painful subject for the actor, who recounts how his Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked his absences and his alcohol use.

The title originates from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins on the beach with his dad – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a pastry chef and a tough individual, a plain speaker who detested the religious hypocrites of the chapel and avoided showing his emotions, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who furiously resented the necessity of going cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and could get young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Due to their immense riches!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, for a time. He was a poor student at the prestigious school. But one day during an English class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his talent emerged; he amazed the instructor and the other boys. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, started his career. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school without much hope, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days scholarships existed for drama school – a way up for working-class actors. His father was always amazed of Anthony's global success: upon requesting his son to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe in a fit of pique – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but fortunately found an excellent television part playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he liked more to the stage. He gave up alcohol during the mid-70s after being a heavy drinker, and thus made it into his later years to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He mentions being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it's your duty to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Indeed. But he also recounts facing a rude director who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. Should you ever act that way 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 came with it. An actor of his caliber must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from the play Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a lengthy appendix composed simply