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Widely regarded as the most memorable appearance in movie lore – and he remains completely still.

Clarice Starling, just starting out, navigates the line of detention units until she reaches Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. He is positioned, with features like an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, chillingly static clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless until the moment he propels himself at the barrier, producing that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that real-life murderers are often very boring, with nothing resembling Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly unrecognized upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar was forged. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his rigorously precise drama teacher Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a sore point for Anthony, who further explains how his Lear was subconsciously influenced by painful regret concerning Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union during the 60s to his first wife, who resented his absences and his alcohol use.

The title originates from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He appeared lost, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a bread-maker and man's man, a plain speaker who detested the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and refused to expressing his feelings, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who deeply disliked the way they had to go humbly to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and could get young Anthony into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, for a while. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. Then, during during an English class he was required to perform the poem by Masefield The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he amazed the instructor and the other students. He says quite plausibly that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Surprisingly, he exited school without much hope, entered the acting world, and shocking his family, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, even though back then there were grants to attend Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then retreated to another room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, strong-willed son, he left the National Theatre in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but stumbled upon an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which eventually resulted to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, that he favored to the stage. He stopped drinking in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and so survived into middle age to execute great performances, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He mentions going out for lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Really?

He often portrays the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who believes you must to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Quite so. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! He appears to be someone who gave up drink yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a detailed supplement composed simply