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

A young FBI agent, new to the job, proceeds down a row of prison cells until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, his face resembling a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He stands frozen right up until he propels himself at the barrier, producing that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. A multitude of true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that real-life murderers are often very boring, with nothing resembling the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not an unknown upon receiving the part that won him an Oscar in the iconic film back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend emerged. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his icily exacting drama teacher his instructor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a difficult topic for Anthony, who recounts how his Lear was subconsciously influenced by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage during the 60s to his first wife, who was angered by his time away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from a vintage war-era photograph of Hopkins as a toddler playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a pastry chef and a tough individual, a direct communicator who loathed the religious hypocrites at the church and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented how they were forced humbly to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and could get 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 grovelling paid off, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. However, one day during an English class he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he amazed the instructor and the other students. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated without much hope, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic within 10 years. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days there were grants to attend Rada – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. His dad remained in awe of Anthony's global success: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then retreated to another room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre in a fit of pique – much to Olivier's disappointment and criticism – but fortunately found a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. He stopped drinking back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live through midlife to execute great performances, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the memoir he appears more reserved, more deliberate. Certain stories aren't entirely successful. He recalls going out for lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor of the Goodfellas fame? Not really. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Truly?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks you must to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Quite so. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply