Hopkins uses his memoir to examine the legacies he received from various mentors and paternal figures, primarily his distant father, Dick Hopkins, and his artistic mentor, Sir Laurence Olivier. Dick offered a working‑class model of resilience and blunt instruction, while Olivier showed him the discipline and ambition of professional craft. The tension between these men shaped Hopkins’s early development, and the synthesis of their influence was instrumental in guiding his artistic development.

Dick Hopkins expressed volatility and buried pride. A baker who believed that he never got life “right,” he gave advice grounded in toughness: “Just get on with it. Stand up straight and don’t complain” (x). He often dismissed his son’s prospects, calling him “bloody hopeless” and a “complete bloody waste of money” (31). However, moments of feeling broke through. The first shift in their relationship occurred when Dick cried after hearing his son speak a single line in a YMCA Easter play, revealing pride that he rarely showed. This connection through performance returned years later on Dick’s deathbed, when he asked his son to recite a soliloquy from Hamlet, finding comfort in the art he once viewed as impractical.

Laurence Olivier shaped Hopkins differently. Olivier first reached him through film, when the screen version of Hamlet created an “unearthly experience” that felt personal, as though the actor was “speaking to [Hopkins]” (6). At the National Theatre, Olivier became a direct mentor. He offered advice—his remark that “nerves is vanity” (141) became a steady guide—and gave visible encouragement. After Hopkins covered for him as an understudy in The Dance of Death, Olivier praised the performance, providing the validation that Hopkins never received from his father.

Hopkins later blended these inheritances in his mature work. His performance as King Lear became a way to confront his father’s memory. He used a horseshoe as a crown, a reference to a keepsake that Richard saved from a beloved horse, and this choice turned the role into a personal study of paternal influence. Olivier’s discipline became the method that Hopkins used to engage with the emotional history tied to his father. By playing Lear with an emphasis on regret and pride, Hopkins approached the grief in his own family. He honored the baker and the actor by joining toughness with technique and shaping an identity that reflected both men.

Later, Hopkins became a mentor to others who hoped to forge careers as actors. Stella founded the Anthony Hopkins Artists Forum, encouraging her husband to help young hopefuls and thereby pass down his own legacy, emphasizing self-worth rather than self-esteem.