PeterRS Posted 5 hours ago Posted 5 hours ago He is unquestionably a great actor. Like other British actors who have reached stardom - Richard Burton, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Albert Finney etc. - he came from a very poor background with little prospect of more than menial jobs. It was at school they discovered acting, or others discovered that talent in them. In an age when the government subsidised admittance to acting schools like the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), they started to blossom. That is how the young Anthony Hopkins started his long career in the business of acting. Now at the age of nearly 88 and with a hugely successful film career behind him that includes two Best Actor Oscars (The Silence of the Lambs and The Father) Hopkins has published his memoir "We Did OK, Kid". I haven't yet read it, and frankly am not sure I shall based on reviews I have read. I know from other books that I have indeed read that there was within the young Hopkins a rebelious streak and for some reason a deep-rooted anger. Clearly hugely talented, Sir Laurence Olivier took him into the company of his National Theatre that was just opening up in London in the early 1960s. It was a company that boasted a superb collective of actors and directors. But somehow, no matter his excellence, Hopkins was never satisfied. His anger was never far from the surface, he argued extensively with directors and turned heavily to booze. He mistreated his first wife appallingly - as reviewers highlight from his book - and had a daughter from whom he has been estranged almost since birth. He does not even know if she is married and has grandchildren from her. While remaining a fixture on the British stage and television until the end of the 1980s, by the early 1970s he was starting to work in film. Even then, he could be 'difficult'. Famously he called Shirley Maclaine, "the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with." By then he was commuting between Britain and California. Then came his huge break playing Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs, a portrayal unlike any other serial killer in film. Hopkins knew exactly how he wanted to play the role. in a 2016 interview, he spoke of his ability to frighten people since he was a boy growing up in Port Talbot, Wales. "I don't know why but I've always known what scares people. When I was a kid I'd tell the girls around the street the story about Dracula and I'd go 'th-th-th' (the sucking noise which he reproduced in The Silence of the Lambs). As a result, they'd run away screaming." He finally moved to California in 1998 and there he met his third wife, finally achieving both the happiness and long-term success he had craved. He had quit booze much earlier and found much enjoyment in his other great passion, music. Few know he is a fine pianist and has many compositions to his name. But why will I not read his memoir? As a number of reviewers have noted, many are likely to buy the book for insights into why and how he played so many charcters in film. Yet, in the book he rarely discusses his film career. Lots of personal details, and some are certainly of interest. But the way he approached Hannibal Lecter, Nixon, Hitchcock, The Remains of the Day (for me his greatest movie role as the emotionally repressed butler), Howards End, Legends of the Fall, Pope Benedict. Meet Joe Black, The Dresser and so many other roles remains behnd the curtains. Most moving almost certainly is when he was with his father just moments before he died. His father asked him to recite something from Shakespeare's Hamlet. “I stopped, he lifted his head up and looked at me, still baffled by his son who was so dense in so many ways but so surprisingly bright in this one” https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/anthony-hopkins-memoir-review-king-lear-nixon-b2857977.html tm_nyc 1 Quote
