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It stands as the most memorable appearance in movie lore – and he remains utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, navigates the line of detention units finally encountering Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, his face resembling a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still clad in a tight prisoner's blue outfit. He stands frozen before suddenly he throws himself against the glass, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of real-crime films have since shown that real-life murderers are often very boring, lacking anything like the actor's commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and also from his icily exacting Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a sore point for Anthony, who recounts how his Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his failed first union in 1966 to his first wife, who resented him being away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the boy who perhaps believed he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a bread-maker and man's man, a direct communicator who detested the religious hypocrites of the chapel and avoided showing his emotions, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who was angered by the way they had to go humbly to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the politician Nye Bevan and could get the young Anthony into a posh school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The humility worked, temporarily. He was a poor student at his new school. Then, during in an English lesson he had to recite the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, propelled him forward. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, went into acting, and shocking his family, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time financial aid was available to go to Rada – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey on screen, that he favored compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of the book his character seems more elusive, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He remembers being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the moment for him to absorb something from the legendary star from Goodfellas? Not really. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it is one's responsibility to be on time, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Indeed. Yet he also tells 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 near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like a person who quit alcohol but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. An actor of his caliber is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply