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Many consider it the most iconic introduction in film history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, just starting out, navigates the line of detention units finally encountering Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, his face resembling a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He remains motionless right up until he throws himself toward the window, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A multitude of real-crime films have since shown that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer when he landed the part that won him an Oscar in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar was forged. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his strictly demanding drama teacher his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a sore point for the actor, who recounts how his King Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse concerning Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to his first wife, who disliked his absences and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a straightforward talker who detested the Bible-punching hypocrites in their community and refused to expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the necessity of going cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and could get the young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The humility worked, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. Then, during in a literature class he was required to perform John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he amazed the instructor and the other boys. He convincingly states that poems, alone, started his career. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, entered the acting world, and shocking his family, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days financial aid was available to go to Rada – a way up for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and burst into tears.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, that he favored to the stage. And he quit booze back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and thus made it into his later years to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the latter half of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more deliberate. Certain stories doesn't quite come off. He remembers being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who sought to advise him his performance as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for Anthony to gain insight a lesson from the famous actor from Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Truly?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who maintains it is one's responsibility to be on time, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Absolutely. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologise to her! And develop some respect. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply