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It stands as the greatest appearance in film history – while he stands completely still.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, proceeds down a corridor of cells until she reaches Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. He is positioned, with features like an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still clad in a tight prisoner's blue outfit. He remains motionless before suddenly he throws himself against the glass, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since revealed that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like the actor's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly unrecognized when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and on his own icily exacting drama teacher Christopher Fettes. There was also a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a sore point for the actor, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to his first wife, who was angered by his time away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He appeared lost, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a direct communicator who despised the religious hypocrites of the chapel and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the necessity of going humbly to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and helped enroll the young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. He was a poor student at his new school. Then, during during an English class he was required to perform the poem by Masefield titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and his talent emerged; he shocked the educator and his classmates. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, started his career. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time there were grants for drama school – a way up for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, strong-willed son, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but fortunately found an excellent television part playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career on screen, which he preferred over theater. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived into middle age to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He mentions being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it's your duty to get there on time, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Indeed. But he also recounts facing a rude director who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply