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Many consider it the most memorable introduction in movie lore – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, proceeds down a corridor of cells arriving at Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. He is positioned, appearing as an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, chillingly static clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move before suddenly he lunges at the barrier, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A multitude of true-crime documentaries have since revealed that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling Hopkins' captivating film persona.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs during the late 80s: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader as recalled by his daughter, as well as his icily exacting acting coach his mentor Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a painful subject for Hopkins, who further explains how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret concerning Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who was angered by his absences and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in this story: a baker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who despised the religious hypocrites in their community and refused to expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who furiously resented the necessity of going cap-in-hand to their rich relatives such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and was able to secure young Anthony into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The humility worked, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite John Masefield's poem known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He convincingly states that poems, alone, launched him. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated without much hope, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was acting with the great Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then scholarships existed for drama school – a way up for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe of Anthony's global success: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role as a suspected war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which led indirectly to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, that he favored over theater. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and managed to live into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of the book he appears more reserved, more studied. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He remembers having lunch with his fellow actor in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated by jealousy. Truly?

He often portrays the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it's your duty to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Quite so. But he also recounts facing a rude director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply