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Many consider it the greatest entrance in cinematic history – yet the actor stays completely still.

A young FBI agent, a rookie, must walk the line of detention units arriving at Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, with features like a living skull filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He stands frozen until the moment he throws himself against the glass, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A multitude of documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that real-life murderers are often very boring, lacking anything like Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer when he landed that Oscar-winning role in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own rigorously precise Rada tutor Christopher Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a painful subject for Hopkins, who also describes how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked his absences and his alcohol use.

The title originates from an historical picture of Hopkins as a toddler playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a baker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites of the chapel and refused to showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the necessity of going humbly to their rich relatives such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves 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 the prestigious school. But one day during an English class he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and the other students. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, started his career. This, and joining the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, went into acting, and shocking his family, was acting with Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days financial aid was available to attend Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, strong-willed son, he left the National Theatre in a fit of pique – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but lucked into an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which eventually resulted to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, that he favored to the stage. He stopped drinking in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and managed to live through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. Certain stories doesn't quite come off. He remembers being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the chance for Anthony to gain insight advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated out of envy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Quite so. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply