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Widely regarded as the most memorable entrance in cinematic history – and he remains utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, navigates the line of detention units arriving at the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, his face resembling an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless right up until he lunges against the glass, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: he was already established, but a legend emerged. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his rigorously precise acting coach his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a sore point for the actor, who recounts how his Lear was subconsciously influenced by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union during the 60s to his first wife, who resented his absences and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in this story: a pastry chef and a tough individual, a plain speaker who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites of the chapel and avoided displaying emotion, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the necessity of going cap-in-hand to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure young Anthony into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts while traveling there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The humility worked, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. However, one day in an English lesson he had to recite the poem by Masefield The West Wind – sight unseen – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, started his career. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school without much hope, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time there were grants for drama school – an opportunity for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, strong-willed son, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but lucked into a memorable TV character playing an alleged war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he liked more compared to stage acting. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and so survived through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the steward Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Certain stories doesn't quite come off. He remembers going out for lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who wanted to tell him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it is one's responsibility to get there on time, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Quite so. But he also recounts confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And develop some respect. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink but possibly not the combativeness that came with it. An actor of his caliber is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with an extensive addendum composed simply