Seven revelations from Anthony Hopkins’ poignant new memoir

There are very few faces that can be recognized like his anthony hopkinseven if he is in disguise a flesh-eating serial killer Or An elderly person becomes a victim of dementiaThere’s no doubt that when Hopkins is on screen – the actor has an unparalleled presence.

This week, the 87-year-old will publish his first memoir, offering a glimpse into the man behind the movies.

We did it right, baby Describes Hopkins’ difficult childhood in Port Talbot, Wales, his journey into acting, his struggles LiquorAnd his storied onscreen career.

However, anyone expecting industry gossip will be disappointed. “The real currency of any celebrity memoir is candor – either a kind of enlightened introspection, or a gossipy willingness to open the veins of bad blood,” Lewis Chilton writes in his three-star review of the memoir“Hopkins largely takes the high road.”

That said, there are still many nuggets of gold in this book that shed some light on one of the world’s most iconic actors.

She shares touching drama moment with actor Paul Sorvino on set with her father nixonHere are seven things we learned from reading We did it right, baby,

separation from one’s daughter

Hopkins has one child, Abigail, 57, whom he shares with his first wife, Petronella Barker. The two have been separated for over 20 years, with the actor previously admitting that he “hasn’t been a good father”.

Hopkins Left his family one night drunkAt that time Abigail was only one. She and Barker divorced shortly thereafter in 1972.

He writes that “After realizing that I was unfit as a father to Abigail, I vowed to have no more children… I could never do to another child what I had done to her”.

Once he got sober, Hopkins tried to reconnect with Abigail and his mother in 1977. However, their meeting was “awkward”.

“They didn’t want to be there,” he writes. “Throughout the meal, they looked into each other’s eyes and made faces. Abigail would never have been able to forgive me because she had left the family when she was a child.”

He writes that his separation from Abigail is “the saddest fact of my life and my greatest regret… That harshness is my default… I hope my daughter knows that my door is always open to her… I want her to be well and happy.”

The complicated relationship with her father – and the moment they shared on his deathbed

Throughout her memoir, Hopkins paints a complex portrait of her father, a man who was difficult to please and suffered from depression and anxiety. “No nonsense, no ambiguity,” he writes of his father. “His guidance to me was: ‘Just get on with it. Stand straight and don’t complain.’ This was a good tip. Second: ‘Life is difficult. so what? Never give up.’ A little rough, but I got over it.”

In a particularly poignant moment, the actor recalls their last conversation, during which his late father asked him to narrate small village,

“As I spoke the words, he closed his eyes, tilted his head back and spoke the first few familiar words with me… When I paused, he lifted his head up and looked at me, still amazed by his son who was so dense in so many ways but so amazingly bright in this one. ‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘How did you learn all these words?'”

Alcoholism – and the moment he turned it around

Hopkins has been telling about his struggle with alcoholism and writing about how it led him to feuds with directors and others. so is his Liquor This meant that he was not always a good husband to his first two wives.

“This is the ugly side of alcoholism,” he writes. “It brought out the cruel side of me. I’m not proud of it at all.”

Hopkins recalls “a terrible movie from the early 1970s” in which he has no recollection of starring. “Nobody in that movie remembered a minute of doing it: we were all drunk,” he writes.

This was around the same time that he crashed his car “while drunk in Beverly Hills.”

He continued, “I drove that car all night through Arizona, not knowing what I was doing. I could have killed someone. I could have killed a whole family.” This was the critical moment that ultimately forced her to seek help: “The craving went away and never came back.”

‘you are so dumb. Keep it to yourself, dear boy’

An actor doesn’t get to where Hopkins is today without taking some risks, and Hopkins himself took a big risk in 1973 when he gave up his role as the lead in a National Theatre’s production of macbeth,

This decision was driven by director John Dexter himself, who made “vicious snubs” and, writes Hopkins, made the show “unbearable”.

Still, leaving a high-profile show midway was a risky move; his friend and teacher laurence oliver Told Hopkins: “You’re being very foolish. It’s all in your head, dear boy.”

However, everything went well and Hopkins got his next role just a few weeks later. His agent at the time told him that he was “born under a lucky star”.

He demanded to be fired from the job nixon

A working-class Welshman playing a disgraced American President had always intrigued Hopkins. According to the actor, director Oliver Stone told him of his decision to cast him: “You’re crazy like Nixon.”

One person who didn’t agree with this idea was Hopkins’ co-star in the 1995 film, Paul Sorvino, who, Hopkins writes, pulled him aside to tell him he was making a meal of the part: “‘Your voice was all wrong… Your speech patterns are very bad.'”

Hopkins was an Oscar winner by then, but that didn’t stop Sorvino from reaching out to him – and so he went to Stone and requested to be fired from the film. The director immediately knew who was to blame for this confidence crisis.

“Is that fat guy coming at you? You don’t have to answer. I know he was. He’s a kid. Don’t pay any attention to him,” Hopkins recalled Stone telling her.

Ultimately, the film received positive reviews, with critic Roger Ebert writing: “In the title role, anthony hopkins He generally looks and sounds similar to the 37th President. This is not an impersonation; Hopkins gives us a deep, resonant performance that creates a man rather than an image he copies.

the silence of the Lambs

One character Hopkins will always be tied to is the role of serial killer Hannibal Lecter. silence of the Lambs – a role that won him his first Oscar.

Although he was initially unaware of the story, believing it to be a PG-rated film about animals, he later read the script and knew it was a part for him: “I instinctively knew how to play Hannibal. I have the devil inside me.”

However, Hopkins had to stop reading himself on page 15, thinking the script was so brilliant that it would be unbearable to read, and ultimately did not get the part. Happily, director Jonathan Demme flew to London and personally offered her the role.

The actor later confessed that his character iconic vampire hiss This was actually a joke inspired by Hungarian-American actor Bela Lugosi’s 1931 performance as Count Dracula.

Could Hopkins be on the autism spectrum?

This idea came to the mind of him and his wife Stella Arroyave. He has always been a self-described loner and has the very useful skill of being able to memorize entire scripts by heart.

Actor begins to think he may be autistic after watching ITV medical comedy-drama doctor martinIn which Martin Clunes plays a doctor who is considered to be on the spectrum.

Hopkins writes, “Given my tendency to memorize and repeat… and my lack of emotionality, Stella’s belief that I probably have Asperger’s is probably correct.” “But like any stoic man from the British Isles, I’m allergic to medical jargon.

“Even though the world might want me to accept the label of Asperger’s, I have chosen to stick to what I view as a more meaningful designation: cool fish.”

‘We Did OK, Kid: A Memoir’ is published by Simon & Schuster on November 4