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Many consider it the most memorable entrance in film history – while he stands completely still.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, must walk a corridor of cells arriving at Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, appearing as a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move before suddenly he propels himself toward the window, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, far from Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not unrecognized upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the iconic film during the late 80s: a star wasn't born, but rather a megastar was forged. His portrayal of Lecter was based, the actor happily remembers in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his strictly demanding Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a sore point for the actor, who also describes how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to his first wife, who disliked him being away and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a baker and a traditional male, a straightforward talker who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and didn't believe in showing his emotions, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked the way they had to go humbly to their rich relatives such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, temporarily. He was a poor student in his new institution. However, one day during an English class he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, started his career. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was on stage with the great Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days scholarships existed for drama school – a path to success for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and wept openly.

Regarding the fiery, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but fortunately found a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and so survived into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of the memoir his character seems more elusive, more deliberate. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He mentions being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Sorvino, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Really?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who believes it is one's responsibility to get there on time, remember every crew member's name and proceed with the work. Indeed. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply