“We Did OK, Kid” — Anthony Hopkins Looks Back with Honesty, Humor, and Grace
There’s something quietly disarming about Anthony Hopkins. For decades, we’ve known him as the man behind some of the greatest performances ever put to film — Silence of the Lambs, The Remains of the Day, The Father. His voice alone carries gravitas. But in his new memoir, We Did OK, Kid, Hopkins doesn’t play the legend. He plays himself — and not the polished, red-carpet version either.
The book opens in Port Talbot, Wales, a working-class steel town where young Tony Hopkins never quite fit in. He paints the world of his childhood with the gritty affection of someone who’s had a lifetime to make peace with it: the smell of the forge, the tough men who never cried, the quiet endurance of his father, the smallness and the safety of home. “I wasn’t a clever boy,” he admits early on. “I didn’t see much of a future.”
But then — a spark. A film. Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet flickers across a cinema screen in 1948, and something clicks. Hopkins, the “bored kid who couldn’t sit still,” is suddenly electrified. He finds purpose in acting — not as an escape, but as a way to make sense of himself.
The early chapters follow that journey: from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, to the National Theatre under the mentorship of Laurence Olivier himself. Hopkins recounts these moments with awe and self-deprecating humor — he never lets you forget how improbable it all was. A baker’s son from Wales sharing a stage with legends? “It felt like I’d snuck in through the back door,” he jokes.
But We Did OK, Kid isn’t a victory lap. It’s a reckoning. Hopkins writes about his battles with alcoholism, the marriages that didn’t survive, and the long stretches of emotional isolation that haunted him even when the awards started piling up. There’s a thread of vulnerability that runs through every chapter — the quiet acknowledgment that talent doesn’t protect you from yourself.
Then comes the turning point: sobriety. He speaks of it not as a triumph but as a grace. “I was lost, and something found me,” he says simply. It’s the kind of line that only someone who’s truly lived it could write — spare, direct, unembellished.
What makes this memoir so affecting is its tone. Hopkins isn’t trying to impress anyone. He’s just taking stock. He talks about aging, mortality, and the slow reconciliation with his younger self. The title, We Did OK, Kid, comes from a photograph of him as a boy with his father — a simple image that’s become a touchstone for reflection. “I look at that boy and think, ‘We did OK, kid.’” It’s both a reassurance and a quiet apology.
By the end, you feel like you’ve sat with Hopkins not across an interview table, but on a quiet afternoon somewhere by the sea — two cups of tea, a bit of silence between stories. He’s grateful, bemused, still curious.
For fans of his work, We Did OK, Kid offers insight into the man behind the characters. But even if you’ve never seen a Hopkins film, it’s worth reading simply for what it is: an honest, funny, and deeply human reflection on what it means to survive your own life — and to finally make peace with the child who started it all.
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