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Widely regarded as the most memorable appearance in cinematic history – while he stands completely still.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, proceeds down the line of detention units arriving at Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. There he stands, his face resembling an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, chillingly static clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He stands frozen before suddenly he lunges at the barrier, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since revealed that real-life murderers are often very boring, with nothing resembling Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar was cemented. The character of Hannibal drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader as recalled by his daughter, and also from his strictly demanding drama teacher his mentor Fettes. There was also a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a difficult topic for Anthony, who also describes how his King 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 Petronella Barker, who disliked him being away and his drinking habits.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in the narrative: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a plain speaker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the necessity of going cap-in-hand to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. He was a poor student at his new school. However, one day in an English lesson he was required to perform John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He says quite plausibly that poetry, on its own, started his career. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school without much hope, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days scholarships existed for drama school – a way up for actors from humble backgrounds. His father was always amazed of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a fit of pique – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but stumbled upon a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, which he preferred compared to stage acting. And he quit booze back in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and so survived into middle age to execute great performances, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson alongside Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He remembers having lunch with his fellow actor in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who believes it's your duty to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and do the job. Indeed. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. An actor of his caliber must know Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply