Anthony Hopkins' Memoir: We Did OK, Kid – Insights: An Icon with a Temper
Widely regarded as the greatest appearance in film history – while he stands completely still.
Clarice Starling, a rookie, navigates the line of detention units arriving at Hannibal Lecter's transparent prison. There he stands, his face resembling a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He remains motionless before suddenly he propels himself at the barrier, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since revealed that genuine criminals are often very boring, far from Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.
He was not an unknown at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was forged. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and on his own icily exacting Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a painful subject for Hopkins, who recounts how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret about Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented his time away and his drinking habits.
A young Hopkins at three years old on Aberavon beach.
The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He felt confused, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a straightforward talker who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and avoided displaying emotion, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who deeply disliked the way they had to go humbly to their wealthy relations such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and helped enroll young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”
The humility worked, temporarily. 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 The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he shocked the educator and the other boys. He convincingly states that poems, alone, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Surprisingly, he exited school without much hope, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time scholarships existed for drama school – a path to success 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 Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and wept openly.
Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – much to Olivier's disappointment and criticism – but stumbled upon a great TV role as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, that he favored compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and managed to live through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.
In the latter half of his autobiography his character seems more elusive, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He remembers having lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who sought to advise him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Really?
He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who maintains you must to get there on time, know all the crew's names and proceed with the work. Indeed. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that came with it. An actor of his caliber is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall from the play 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
