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It stands as the most memorable entrance in movie lore – while he stands completely still.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, must walk the line of detention units until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. The man is present, with features like a living skull filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move right up until he lunges at the barrier, emitting that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless real-crime films have since shown that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not unrecognized at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but rather a megastar was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in this new autobiography, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own icily exacting acting coach his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a sore point for Anthony, who further explains how his Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt about Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage during the 60s to his first wife, who was angered by him being away and his alcohol use.

The title originates from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a baker and a tough individual, a direct communicator who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites in their community and avoided expressing his feelings, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who deeply disliked how they were forced begging to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with Nye Bevan and could get the young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts while traveling there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, temporarily. He was a poor student at his new school. Then, during in an English lesson he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he amazed the instructor and the other boys. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school without much hope, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with the great Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time there were grants for drama school – an opportunity for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and burst into tears.

Regarding the fiery, strong-willed son, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but lucked into a memorable TV character as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. He gave up alcohol in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the latter half of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He remembers going out for lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star from Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Really?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who maintains it's your duty to get there on time, remember every crew member's name and do the job. Indeed. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And learn some manners. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows 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