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It stands as the greatest introduction in cinematic history – and he remains without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, navigates a row of prison cells until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. There he stands, his face resembling an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He stands frozen until the moment he propels himself toward the window, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous real-crime films have since demonstrated that actual serial killers tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

He was not unrecognized upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film back in 1989: he was already established, but a legend was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own rigorously precise Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a sore point for Anthony, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse concerning Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who was angered by him being away and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He felt confused, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a bread-maker and man's man, a straightforward talker who detested the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked how they were forced begging to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and could get young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. But one day during an English class he was required to perform the verse by John Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other students. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, started his career. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, even though back then there were grants to attend Rada – a path to success for performers from modest means. His father was always amazed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but lucked into a memorable TV character playing an alleged 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 thriving starry career in cinema, which he preferred compared to stage acting. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and so survived through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his second Academy Award.

During the second part of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He recalls having lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it's your duty to get there on time, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Indeed. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologise to her! 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 a person who quit alcohol yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins must know Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply