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It stands as the most memorable appearance in film history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, navigates the line of detention units finally encountering the notorious doctor's transparent prison. He is positioned, his face resembling an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless until the moment he throws himself toward the window, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are often very boring, far from Hopkins' captivating film persona.

He was not an unknown at the time he got the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: he was already established, but rather a megastar emerged. The character of Hannibal was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader as recalled by his daughter, and on his own rigorously precise Rada tutor Christopher Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a sore point for Anthony, who further explains how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who resented him being away and drinking.

The book's name comes from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a baker and man's man, a direct communicator who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and avoided showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented the necessity of going humbly to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. He was a poor student at his new school. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite the verse by John Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He says quite plausibly that poetry, on its own, launched him. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated without much hope, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was acting with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time scholarships existed to attend Rada – a way up for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey on screen, which he liked more to the stage. He gave up alcohol during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live through midlife to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more studied. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He recalls having lunch by his co-star in the film Nixon, the much-respected actor Sorvino, who sought to advise him his performance as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. Anthony appears to agree with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven by jealousy. Truly?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who believes it's your duty to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Quite so. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply