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Many consider it the most memorable appearance in cinematic history – and he remains without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, must walk a corridor of cells finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, his face resembling a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He remains motionless before suddenly he throws himself toward the window, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless real-crime films have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are usually uninteresting, far from Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not a newcomer at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: a star wasn't born, but rather a megastar was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, as well as his rigorously precise Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a sore point for Hopkins, who further explains how his King Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the kid who maybe thought he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and refused to expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented how they were forced cap-in-hand to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the famous Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. He was a poor student at his new school. But one day in an English lesson he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other boys. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, launched him. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days scholarships existed to attend Rada – a path to success for working-class actors. His father was always amazed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then went into another room and wept openly.

Regarding the fiery, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre in a fit of pique – causing Olivier's regret and criticism – but lucked into a memorable TV character as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, which he liked more to the stage. And he quit booze during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson featuring Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of the memoir his character seems more elusive, more studied. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He mentions having lunch by his co-star in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star from Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Truly?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it's your duty to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Quite so. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that came with it. An actor of his caliber must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply