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

Widely regarded as the greatest entrance in cinematic history – while he stands utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, navigates a corridor of cells finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. He is positioned, appearing as a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, chillingly static clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move right up until he throws himself toward the window, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like the actor's commanding screen presence.

He was not unrecognized at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar was forged. The character of Hannibal drew influence, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader as recalled by his daughter, and on his own strictly demanding acting coach Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a painful subject for the actor, who further explains how his portrayal of Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who was angered by his absences and his drinking habits.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins on the beach with his dad – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the memorable figure in this story: a baker and a tough individual, a direct communicator who despised the religious hypocrites of the chapel and didn't believe in expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. His father who was angered by the necessity of going humbly to affluent family members including Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves while traveling there. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The humility worked, for a while. He was a poor student at his new school. But one day during an English class he had to recite the poem by Masefield titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other students. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time scholarships existed to attend Rada – an opportunity for working-class actors. His father was always amazed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – much to Olivier's disappointment and disapproval – but stumbled upon a memorable TV character as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, which he liked more compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and thus made it into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. Certain stories aren't entirely successful. He remembers having lunch alongside his cast mate in the film Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated out of envy. Really?

He often portrays the grounded, serious thespian who believes it's your duty to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Indeed. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And develop some respect. You ever do that again in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. An actor of his caliber must know Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply