Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Oscar winner Hopkins reflects on his neuroses, addictions, and dedication to his craft in his elegant debut. After constantly struggling at school in 1940s Wales, Hopkins set out to prove to his disappointed parents that he could succeed at something. Fortunately, he had a formidable stage presence and an unstinting devotion to learning technique. Less useful were his belligerent attitude ("Shove your little play and your precious little tin-pot theater right up your stupid squeaky little crack," he told one director) and prodigious drinking. A 1970s DUI in California finally got Hopkins into AA, but his insecurities and coldness lingered, informing his portrayals of figures like Richard Nixon and Hannibal Lecter. Hopkins's reminiscences unfold as a series of dramatic scenes that can feel embroidered given their reliance on his memories of lengthy conversations from 70 years ago. Still, the psychological tensions they convey are convincing. His comments on how he develops roles, meanwhile, are full of astute analysis: "I would play one of the cruelest figures in Shakespeare with no trace of bad intent," he writes of preparing to audition for the role of Iago. "Not raving but delivering a plan with straightforward logic, bringing each member of the audience, one by one, into your confidence." The result is a rich portrait of the artist as imperfect truth-seeker. Photos. Agents: Byrd Leavell and Albert Lee, UTA. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Two-time Best Actor Oscar winner Hopkins (b. 1937) offers a memoir about his trajectory from baker's son in South Wales to world fame, in which he registers surprise at how luck and hard work brought him success. During his stint as a quiet, non-athletic student in a working-class boarding school, he found inspiration in the arts--music and drawing. Eventually, having been blessed with a good memory, he took to the stage in local productions. After army service, he graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, oblivious to the mod 1960s London around him. The memoir shares acting and life advice given by Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier and discusses how Hopkins decided to play Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs as a man both awake and remote. The Oscar-winning role was a turning point that brought him to a new level of self-assurance. Hopkins also writes of wrestling with alcohol-use disorder, losing his house in the Pacific Palisades fire, and giving back to his profession by offering student workshops. VERDICT It's not a gossipy tell-all, but Hopkins's memoir is gently reflective, perceptive, and memorable.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The legendary Welsh actor pens his memoirs. In 1949, when he was 11, Hopkins' parents sent him to boarding school in southeastern Wales. He hated that "brick prison" and its "grim teaching staff," yet the school gave him his first taste of Shakespeare when it screened Laurence Olivier's 1948 film version ofHamlet. "I felt that Olivier as Hamlet was speaking to me, referring to some long-vanished, ancient part of myself," he writes. In this charming if run-of-the-mill memoir, Hopkins charts his progression from the son of a baker who feared his son wouldn't amount to anything, to a student who prompted headmasters to whack him in the head and claim, "Does anything go on in that thick skull of yours?" to one of the world's most celebrated actors. Hopkins describes his career progression, starting with a fortuitous visit to the local YMCA and an offer to speak his first-ever line onstage. He recounts his scholarship years at the Cardiff College of Music and Drama, his acceptance to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, his struggles with alcoholism, his years working under Olivier at London's National Theatre, and his first film role, which came about after Peter O'Toole encouraged him to test forThe Lion in Winter. Much of the book's second half is devoted to Hopkins' cinema career, including the roles for which he won his Best Actor Oscars, as Hannibal Lecter inThe Silence of the Lambs (1991) and as the titular character inThe Father (2020). Much of this material is the standard stuff one finds in celebrity memoirs: A solitary kid who hated school and didn't fit in anywhere goes on to a distinguished career. Descriptions of film shoots can be sketchy. But Hopkins is an agreeable guide, and there's ample humor here to entertain, as when he notes that, when his agent offered him the script forThe Silence of the Lambs, he asked, "Is it a children's film?" A fun if by-the-numbers memoir from a cinema icon. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
