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Many consider it the most iconic introduction in movie lore – while he stands completely still.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, must walk the line of detention units arriving at Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. The man is present, with features like an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move until the moment he propels himself toward the window, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless real-crime films have since demonstrated that genuine criminals are often very boring, with nothing resembling Hopkins' captivating film persona.

He was not a newcomer at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in the iconic film during the late 80s: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar emerged. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, as well as his strictly demanding Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a sore point for Hopkins, who also describes how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented him being away and his alcohol use.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a baker and man's man, a plain speaker who detested the religious hypocrites of the chapel and avoided expressing his feelings, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who deeply disliked the necessity of going begging to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. He was a poor student at his new school. But one day during an English class he had to recite the verse by John Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he shocked the educator and his classmates. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic within 10 years. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time scholarships existed to go to Rada – a way up for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, strong-willed son, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but lucked into an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, that he favored to the stage. He stopped drinking back in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and thus made it into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He recalls being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the opportunity for him to absorb something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Is that so?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it is one's responsibility to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Indeed. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. An actor of his caliber is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a detailed supplement composed simply