It must be hard writing a memoir if you’re Anthony Hopkins. On screen, the two-time Oscar-winning Welshman has a rare, almost preternatural gravitas; whether he’s reciting King Lear or tearing off someone’s face as Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins makes you pay attention. In prose, however – shorn of his vocal tone, and those shrewd, precise facial muscles – the 87-year-old thespian faces an altogether different challenge.
To this end, it’s perhaps understandable that We Did OK, Kid, Hopkins’s new autobiography, fails to really capture what’s so thoroughly impressive about his life. Using straightforward but not wholly inelegant prose, the book walks readers through Hopkins’s childhood, his journey into acting, his struggles with alcoholism, and his film career – with the lattermost category receiving frustratingly short shrift.
