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It stands as the greatest appearance in film history – while he stands utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, proceeds down the line of detention units finally encountering Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. There he stands, appearing as a living skull filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move right up until he propels himself toward the window, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A multitude of real-crime films have since shown that actual serial killers are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not a newcomer upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar was forged. The character of Hannibal was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own strictly demanding drama teacher his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a sore point for Anthony, who further explains how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who was angered by his time away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a pastry chef and man's man, a direct communicator who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites in their community and didn't believe in displaying emotion, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented the necessity of going humbly to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and helped enroll the young Anthony into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims while traveling there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. However, one day in an English lesson he had to recite the poem by Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – 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, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Surprisingly, he exited school a no-hoper, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, even though back then scholarships existed for drama school – a way up for actors from humble backgrounds. His father was always amazed of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – much to Olivier's disappointment and disapproval – but lucked into a memorable TV character as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, that he favored to the stage. And he quit booze during the mid-70s after being a heavy drinker, and so survived into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his second Academy Award.

During the second part of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Certain stories doesn't quite come off. He mentions going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it is one's responsibility to get there on time, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Indeed. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! 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 but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. An actor of his caliber must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply