Exploring Anthony Hopkins' Autobiography We Did OK, Kid – Insights: An Icon Known for His Fiery Nature

Widely regarded as the greatest entrance in film history – and he remains completely still.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, navigates a corridor of cells arriving at Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. He is positioned, his face resembling a living skull exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move until the moment he throws himself against the glass, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are usually uninteresting, far from the actor's captivating film persona.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar emerged. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader according to his daughter's memories, and also from his rigorously precise Rada tutor Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a difficult topic for Hopkins, who recounts how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who resented his time away and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from a vintage war-era photograph of Hopkins as a toddler playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He appeared lost, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in this story: a pastry chef and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites in their community and avoided expressing his feelings, but had a streak of wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the way they had to go humbly to affluent family members including Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves while traveling there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. Then, during in an English lesson he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He reasonably claims that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Surprisingly, he exited school a no-hoper, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then scholarships existed for drama school – a path to success for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which eventually resulted to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, which he liked more to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of the memoir his character seems more elusive, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He recalls being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it's your duty to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Absolutely. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And develop some respect. You ever do that again in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Hopkins sounds like a person who quit alcohol yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a lengthy appendix composed simply