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Many consider it the most memorable introduction in film history – while he stands utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, just starting out, navigates the line of detention units finally encountering Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. There he stands, appearing as a living skull filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He stands frozen until the moment he throws himself at the barrier, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous real-crime films have since shown that actual serial killers tend to be quite dull, far from the actor's captivating film persona.

He was not an unknown at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was forged. The character of Hannibal drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader according to his daughter's memories, and also from his icily exacting Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a sore point for Hopkins, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to his first wife, who was angered by his time away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in this story: a baker and a traditional male, a plain speaker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and refused to showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who deeply disliked the way they had to go begging to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll young Anthony into a posh school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves while traveling there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, for a while. He was a poor student at his new school. Then, during during an English class he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, started his career. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated without much hope, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time there were grants to attend Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe of Anthony's global success: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and wept openly.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but fortunately found a memorable TV character playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, that he favored to the stage. He gave up alcohol in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and so survived into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He remembers being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Anthony appears to agree with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Really?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it's your duty to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Indeed. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that accompanied it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply