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Largely co-written with the co-operation of Anthony Hopkins, his family, friends, colleagues, and critics, Quentin Falk's acclaimed biography has been fully updated to include his latest film roles, details of how he has now become a citizen of the United States and his marriage to third wife Stella Aroyave. ... Read more

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What An Extraordinary Man!!
A beautiful written book about one of the best actors ever. Quentin Falk nails it on the head clean. With more information and stories about the actor, not to mention another section of beautiful pictures, this book tops the edition before it easily. Any fan of Sir Hopkins is very likely to love this book too. I highly recommend it to my fellow Tony fans! ... Read more

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An insightful portrait of the Oscar-winning actor.

Regarded by many to be among the greatest actors of modern cinema, Anthony Hopkins has amassed a prodigious body of work and created some of the most memorable characters in recent film. Awarded the Best Actor Oscar for his brilliant portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins was also nominated by the Academy for his work in Nixon, Amistad, and The Remains of the Day. In both box-office returns and career longevity, the Welsh actor has outpaced all the British luminaries to whom he has been likened, among them Richard Burton and Sean Connery. Ranging from his earliest days, including his training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, to his lauded work on stage and screen, Michael Feeney Callan’s definitive biography does full justice to this versatile and esteemed star. ... Read more

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A Great Talent Hobbled by Inner Demons!
Michael Feeney Callan's biography of Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins is not your typical cut-and-paste "and then he starred in..." movie actor bio. Rather it's an erudite, in-depth, psychological profile of a wonderfully talented actor whose professional and personal life has been ruled - and crippled by - lifelong feelings of insecurity.

Hopkins' inner demons were created early on. An only child born in wartime Wales he grew up insulated and withdrawn, a bit of a dreamer with few friends. A demanding, workaholic father combined with all of the above to produce feelings of insecurity that plagued him most of his life. Pretty much of a failure academically, a chance visit to a local theatre group sparked the seemingly one and only passion in his life, acting.

Callan spends 400-odd pages detailing Hopkins' tortured development as an actor and human being. There are obvious career highs - a featured player with Olivier's National Theatre in the early '60s, his big break opposite Katherine Hepburn in THE LION IN WINTER, eminently watchable performances in films like A BRIDGE TOO FAR, ELEPHANT MAN and THE BOUNTY, his definining moment-in-the-sun in 1991's SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and so on.

Yet, as a person, Hopkins rarely seemed to enjoy any of it for long, his inner demon - which he labeled 'His Majesty the Monstrous Baby' -undermining whatever professional and personal achievements occurred. Hopkins' alcoholism didn't help matters along the way, which included a number of marriages and squandered friendships. Hopkins has apparently triumphed over his inner devils but...

Callan's book is not an easy read. He is a masterful writer but the subject is depressing with the endless top-of-the-world/hitting-bottom cycles of Hopkins' life. A more selective use of material from interviews Hopkins gave over the years and and fewer reminiscences from his fellow actors and friends would have made Callan's points more effectively.

Movie fans should take a look at ANTHONY HOPKINS, A THREE ACT LIFE. By book's end, you definitely know Anthony Hopkins...but with knowledge comes sadness. It's such a pity that this talented individual led the sad life described in this book. ... Read more

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Updated for this paperback edition, Callan reveals the full story of Hopkins's early years, from his childhood in Wales to his successes at the National Theatre and the break-up of his marriage to his move to Hollywood. Battling with insecurity and alcoholism, his career reached its lowest ebb in 1975 until his new-found maturity and a string of classic parts in films such as "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Howards End" earned him respect and growing fame. The life of Anthony Hopkins is traced by the author, with the co-operation of many of Hopkins's friends, family and fellow actors. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Hi Tom!!! 12 Year Old Chivas Regal Scotch For $37.50 At Dan Murphy's!!!
In this book the author gives a very detailed account of the life and career of actor Anthony Hopkins. It is interesting to note that Mr. Hopkins only agreed to contribute to this book on the condition that the author did not interview his first wife who he left along with his baby. In reading this book one can only come to the conclusion that Mr. Hopkins is to be greatly admired as an actor but he leaves a lot to be desired as a husband and father.I would also like to say "Hi" to Tom who works at the Video Store and is always very patient with me in my hunt for little known movies. If you are reading this Tom I hope you invested some of your hard earned cash on a good bottle of 12 year old Chivas RegalScotch which goes very well with a couple of chunks of ice. Leave Jim Beam for the peasants to drink!!! ... Read more

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The biography of Anthony Hopkins, revised and updated to include coverage of all of the distinguished actor's films. It includes interviews with friends and family, along with a frank and revealing account of the life and stormy career of one of Britain's most famous stars. ... Read more

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Basics, but wordy...
Good research and background details, but bogged down in several spots for me. A bit wordy, didn't find any additioanal personal insights than other previous works. ... Read more

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The fruit of a lifetime's reading and thinking about literature, its delights and its responsibilities, this book by acclaimed poet and critic Anthony Hecht explores the mysteries of poetry, offering profound insight into poetic form, meter, rhyme, and meaning. Ranging from Renaissance to contemporary poets, Hecht considers the work of Shakespeare, Sidney, and Noel; Housman, Hopkins, Eliot, and Auden; Frost, Bishop, and Wilbur; Amichai, Simic, and Heaney. Stepping back from individual poets, Hecht muses on rhyme and on meter, and also discusses St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians and Melville's Moby-Dick. Uniting these diverse subjects is Hecht's preoccupation with the careful deployment of words, the richness and versatility of language and of those who use it well.

Elegantly written, deeply informed, and intellectually playful, Melodies Unheard confirms Anthony Hecht's reputation as one of our most original and imaginative thinkers on the literary arts.

Customer Reviews (3)

Poet writes about poetry
A mix of essays by one of America's great contemporary poets (though now deceased).Some of the essays are short reviews or treatments of one or two poems; others, more developed, comprehensive discussions (e.g., Shakespeare's sonnets, the sestina as a form).Always readable, often illuminating.

Essays Unsurpassed
This compilation of essays by perhaps the finest, most elegant poet writing on either side of the Atlantic has its faults.The first one to catch the eye is that the first two essays on the Sonnet repeat each other, word for word, in several places.But taking the work, which covers many subjects in addition to the "Melodies Unheard," which is saved for the last, as a whole, one can not help be struck by Hecht's depth of insight and urbanity of expression on each subject: from Sidney, to Elizabeth Bishop, to Moby Dick.It is simply impossible for a poetic mind to come away unmoved or without perspective shifted from the depths so adroitly explored here. My favourite example (And I suspect Hecht's as well, since it's the only chapter in the book on which he lavishes a full page reproduction of a Bosch painting in illustration of a part of a poem.Indeed, there are no other props of this sort in the entire collection.) is his explication of Elizabeth Bishop's poem "The Man-Moth."I never thought very much of Ms. Bishop's poetry before reading this explication, so deep and fecund of insight.- But herein lies a sort of paradox inherent to most all these essays-I now appreciate "The Man-Moth" exceedingly but am even more overwhelmed by rereading Hecht's poetic explication of the poem.The same is true of Hecht on Moby Dick.I suppose this is a great compliment.But one wonders whether Ms. Bishop would have thought so.In any event, though disagreeing with Hecht in regard to a couple of minor nuances here and there, I would say to the already very select group considering the purchase of this book that it's well worth it.Maybe, if Bishop is a favourite poet of yours or Melville a favourite author, too well worth it.As Hecht avers in the last essay, "...our experience of poetry is no simple business." - Nor is our experience of Hecht.

Solving poetry's mystery by exploring others' craft
REVIEWED BY HENRY TAYLOR ...

Anthony Hecht, one of the very few finest poets of the past 50 years, is also one of the most learned, wide-ranging, perceptive, and engaging critics. Now 80, he has gathered in this new collection, "Melodies Unheard," 18 essays, most of them done in the past five years in response to invitations and assignments of various kinds, from centenary observances to pieces for The New York Review of Books.
As to his subtitle, he remarks in his Introduction, "What, I have asked myself, is the critic trying to do? And there are plenty of answers. But perhaps we might begin with the urge governing Poe's Auguste Dupin: to solve a mystery. Not infrequently this means discovering that there was a mystery to be solved in the first place, because no one had noticed any need for scrutiny."
Though he does not say so explicitly, Mr. Hecht appears also to be concerned with "mystery" in the sense of skill, craft, or art; this older usage appeared often in the indentures of apprentices, bound for a period to learn the mysteries of , say, tailoring. Near the end of his Introduction, he says, "No poet examines someone else's poem, especially a major poem or a large body of poetry, without hoping to learn something from such scrutiny; and, moreover, to learn something he can put to his own personal use."
It is an inspiring and humbling object lesson for any serious reader to behold the thoroughness with which Mr. Hecht opens his powers of perception to the variety of texts he encountered in the course of writing these pieces. He has his preferences, to be sure; he understands that meter and rhyme have been integral to poetry for centuries, and that to dispense with them is to incur serious risks. It must be noted, however, that he is no knee-jerk enemy of free verse; one of the best pieces here is a penetrating and highly favorable consideration of Charles Simic, whose unmetrical surrealism Mr. Hecht praises for its resonance and responsibility.
Collections of separate critical pieces can sometimes seem too miscellaneous, whatever the brilliance or persuasiveness on display in the individual essays. Mr. Hecht has addressed this matter with unusual thoughtfulness and diligence, and the result is a solid book rather than an assemblage of book parts.
First, his Introduction takes up some points not dealt with to his satisfaction in the essays. For example, early in an essay chiefly concerned with the opening of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," Mr. Hecht mentions "the bedeviling topic of Eliot's anti-Semitism, which I must leave for another time." He makes short work of William Empson's attempt to make Eliot out as a decent fellow of his time who had no problem with some of his time's notions, and just slightly longer work of Eliot's own claim that he was not an anti-Semite and never had been.
Anti-Semitism arises again in a discussion of St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians; Mr. Hecht's treatment of it is notable for its patient use of a remarkable amount of Biblical knowledge, and for its tact with personal reminiscences of direct encounters with wounding prejudice.
Second, the book concludes with an essay called "The Music of Formsþ" which appears to have been written for the collection; it is not mentioned in the acknowledgments of editors and lecture venues. It is here that Mr. Hecht is most clearly distressed at what seems to him the shrinking audience for such delicacies of technique as he explores in the rest of the book. For years, he tells us, it was his habit, following some exposition of metrical terminology and example, to ask his undergraduate students to locate for him the place where the dialogue of Romeo and Juliet shifts from prose into verse. It didn't last:
"After a certain number of years I gave up asking my classes this question, which obviously embarrassed them and discouraged me, for it became transparently clear that the overwhelming majority of my students were quite simply deaf to almost all metrical considerations and that my introductory lecture on the topic was purposeless and wasteful. And I reluctantly concluded that there are many who are not so much mystified by meter as completely oblivious to it."
One who has repeatedly urged students to observe line-ends when quoting poetry in critical papers can but agree with this assessment. However, it seems always to have been the case that those to whom matters of precision and beauty of language are matters of great importance - of life and death, as we sayþ - are greatly outnumbered by those to whom such matters are of no importance. Mr. Hecht strikes a firm balance between taking pessimistic notice of this situation, and considering that Milton's "fit audience though few" is entirely deserving of the best effort he can muster.
Thus Mr. Hecht proceeds, with grace, urbanity, good humor, and vast erudition, to consider certain literary works from the past eight centuries, and to shed light on their techniques and on a few instances of obscurity.
Among the poets treated are Shakespeare, Philip Sidney, A.E. Housman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, and Yehuda Amichai. There are also essays on aspects of "Moby-Dick," and on the prose of Seamus Heaney. The approaches range from close explication of text to sweeping historical surveys. Throughout, the style and manner are those of a deeply knowledgeable and polished conversationalist, grateful to be in the presence of the works he understands so well. Care for poetry and its traditions has seldom been so memorably exemplified. ... Read more

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Provides a careful and comprehensive reading of Hopkins' poetry, early and late, from the vantage point of the methods, discipline and theological insights of the Ignatian spirit of "The Spiritual Exercises." Using Hopkins' own projected commentary and other spiritual notes, the author offers a reading of Hopkins' poetry highlighting the themes of Ignatian spirituality and analyzing parallel structures between the Ignatian meditation and Hopkins' sonnets. Contents: Elected Silence: Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889; Ignatius and Hopkins; Ignatius and the Wreck; The Ignatian Spirit of the Priest-Poet; The Desolate Self of the Terrible Sonnets; Hopkins and the Meditative Tradition; Postscript; Postscript II: The Psychology of Ignatian Election: "The Selfless Self of Self." ... Read more

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This modern approach to neurology provides a framework within which the young doctor can see that the subject lies at the heart of internal medicine, and should not be regarded as an arcane speciality. The book first covers the principles of diagnosis, investigation, and treatment. The author shows how careful history-taking and examination will allow an accurate diagnosis of the site of malfunction, without the need for vast stores of esoteric knowledge. He lays special emphasis upon the management of common yet problematical symptoms such as headache and facial pain. The book next comprehensively covers the principal diseases and syndromes in neurology. Greatest weight is given to the commonest illnesses such as stroke, dementia, and multiple sclerosis, and the author stresses how recent advances in scientific medicine have increased our understanding of their epidemiology and management. Finally there is a discussion of rehabilitation and the management of chronic disease and handicap. This text is aimed at junior doctors studying for professional exams, practising physicians, neurologists, and senior medical students. ... Read more