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It stands as the greatest introduction in film history – and he remains completely still.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, must walk a row of prison cells until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. The man is present, with features like an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He stands frozen right up until he lunges against the glass, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since revealed that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, far from the actor's captivating film persona.

He wasn't exactly an unknown at the time he got the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller in 1989: he was already established, but a legend emerged. His Dr. Lecter was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his rigorously precise Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a painful subject for Anthony, who also describes how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union back in 1966 to his first wife, who resented his time away and his drinking habits.

The title originates from an historical picture of a young Hopkins on the beach with his dad – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He felt confused, lonely, vulnerable little boy from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in the narrative: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a direct communicator who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and avoided displaying emotion, but had a streak of wistful, tearful romanticism. It was Hopkins Sr who deeply disliked the way they had to go humbly to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the famous Bevan and could get young Anthony into a posh school: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. However, one day during an English class he was required to perform the verse by John Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he shocked the educator and the other students. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated without much hope, went into acting, and shocking his family, was on stage with the great Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then financial aid was available to go to Rada – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – causing Olivier's regret and disapproval – but fortunately found a memorable TV character as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, that he favored compared to stage acting. And he quit booze back in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and so survived through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more calculated. Certain stories doesn't quite come off. He recalls going out for lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the chance for Anthony to gain insight advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who thinks you must to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Indeed. But he also recounts confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. An actor of his caliber surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply