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Many consider it the greatest appearance in film history – while he stands completely still.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, must walk a row of prison cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, with features like a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still clad in a tight prisoner's blue outfit. He stands frozen right up until he throws himself toward the window, producing that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless real-crime films have since revealed that actual serial killers are often very boring, lacking anything like Hopkins' captivating film persona.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown when he landed that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film during the late 80s: a star wasn't born, instead, a superstar was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and also from his rigorously precise drama teacher Christopher Fettes. There was also a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a difficult topic for the actor, who further explains how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who was angered by him being away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from an historical picture of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He felt confused, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a baker and man's man, a plain speaker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and didn't believe in expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who was angered by the way they had to go cap-in-hand to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves during the car ride. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The humility worked, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. Then, during in a literature class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, launched him. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated without much hope, entered the acting world, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time scholarships existed to go to Rada – a way up for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and burst into tears.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – causing Olivier's regret and criticism – but stumbled upon an excellent television part playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived into middle age to execute great performances, including Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

During the second part of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He remembers going out for lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul, who sought to advise him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated by jealousy. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks you must to be on time, remember every crew member's name and proceed with the work. Absolutely. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And develop some respect. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's speech regarding Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with a lengthy appendix composed simply