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Many consider it the most iconic introduction in movie lore – and he remains utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, proceeds down the line of detention units finally encountering the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. The man is present, with features like a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He stands frozen until the moment he propels himself against the glass, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. A multitude of true-crime documentaries have since shown that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like Hopkins' captivating film persona.

He was not an unknown when he landed that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: he was already established, but a legend emerged. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader according to his daughter's memories, and on his own strictly demanding drama teacher his mentor Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a sore point for the actor, who further explains how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage during the 60s to his first wife, who was angered by him being away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the kid who maybe thought he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a bread-maker and man's man, a plain speaker who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and avoided displaying emotion, but also exhibited nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked the necessity of going humbly to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into a posh school: “Due to their immense riches!” he shouts while traveling there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. But one day in an English lesson he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield titled The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He convincingly states that poems, alone, launched him. This, and joining the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, entered the acting world, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting with the great Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then there were grants for drama school – a way up for working-class actors. His father was always amazed of Anthony's global success: upon requesting his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – much to Olivier's disappointment and disapproval – but fortunately found a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which eventually resulted to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, which he liked more compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking back in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and managed to live through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. A few tales fall a bit flat. He remembers having lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor from Goodfellas? Not exactly. Anthony appears to agree with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it's your duty to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Indeed. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him must know Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply