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It stands as the most iconic introduction in cinematic history – while he stands utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, navigates the line of detention units finally encountering Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, his face resembling a living skull radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move before suddenly he propels himself at the barrier, producing that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless real-crime films have since revealed that actual serial killers tend to be quite dull, with nothing resembling Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer when he landed the part that won him an Oscar in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar was forged. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his strictly demanding Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a difficult topic for the actor, who further explains how his Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked his absences and drinking.

The memoir's title is derived from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in the narrative: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a direct communicator who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. It was Hopkins Sr who was angered by how they were forced cap-in-hand to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The humility worked, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. However, one day in an English lesson he had to recite John Masefield's poem The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time scholarships existed for drama school – a path to success for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines 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 fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but lucked into a memorable TV character playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, which he liked more to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and so survived into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the book he appears more reserved, more deliberate. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He remembers having lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Really?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who believes it's your duty to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Absolutely. But he also recounts confronting an obnoxious director who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologise to her! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that came with it. A Shakespearean like him must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply