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Many consider it the greatest appearance in film history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, proceeds down a row of prison cells finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. 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 stands frozen until the moment he propels himself at the barrier, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that real-life murderers are often very boring, with nothing resembling the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown at the time he got the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: a star wasn't born, but a legend emerged. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his strictly demanding drama teacher his instructor Fettes. There was also a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a painful subject for the actor, who also describes how his Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who disliked his absences and drinking.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a bread-maker and man's man, a direct communicator who loathed the religious hypocrites of the chapel and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked the way they had to go cap-in-hand to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the politician Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Due to their immense riches!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically at the prestigious school. Then, during during an English class he was required to perform the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other students. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, started his career. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting with the great Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time there were grants to go to Rada – a path to success for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but fortunately found a memorable TV character as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in movies, which he liked more over theater. He stopped drinking back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived through midlife to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the butler 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 latter half of the memoir he appears more reserved, more studied. A few tales fall a bit flat. He remembers going out for lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Sorvino, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star from Goodfellas? Not really. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated out of envy. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks you must to get there on time, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Absolutely. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like a person who quit alcohol yet perhaps not the aggression that came with it. An actor of his caliber must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply