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Many consider it the greatest entrance in movie lore – and he remains utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, navigates the line of detention units arriving at Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. The man is present, his face resembling a living skull exuding demonic evil, chillingly static clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move before suddenly he lunges at the barrier, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A multitude of real-crime films have since shown that actual serial killers are often very boring, far from Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but rather a megastar was forged. The character of Hannibal was inspired, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin according to his daughter's memories, as well as his rigorously precise acting coach his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a painful subject for the actor, who further explains how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by painful regret about Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who resented him being away and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler 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, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a straightforward talker who despised the religious hypocrites at the church and didn't believe in expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked the way they had to go begging to their wealthy relations such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims during the car ride. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was acting with the great Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time there were grants to attend Rada – a way up for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but stumbled upon a memorable TV character as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in movies, which he liked more to the stage. He stopped drinking in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and managed to live into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of the memoir his character seems more elusive, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He recalls going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with the director's criticism of Sorvino as being motivated by jealousy. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who believes it is one's responsibility to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Absolutely. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And develop some respect. Should you ever act that way near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply