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Widely regarded as the most memorable appearance in cinematic history – while he stands without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, just starting out, navigates a row of prison cells finally encountering Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. He is positioned, with features like an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move before suddenly he lunges at the barrier, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since shown that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend emerged. The character of Hannibal was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own icily exacting drama teacher his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a sore point for Anthony, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who resented him being away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who loathed the religious hypocrites at the church and didn't believe in displaying emotion, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who was angered by the necessity of going begging to affluent family members including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll young Anthony into a posh school: “Due to their immense riches!” he shouts during the car ride. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. He was a poor student at the prestigious school. But one day in an English lesson he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He reasonably claims that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic within 10 years. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then financial aid was available for drama school – an opportunity for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but lucked into an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it through midlife to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of his autobiography his character seems more elusive, more deliberate. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He recalls having lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Truly?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who maintains it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Indeed. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker 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 possibly not the combativeness that went with it. An actor of his caliber must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from the play Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply