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Many consider it the most memorable appearance in movie lore – while he stands without moving a muscle.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, proceeds down the line of detention units until she reaches the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. There he stands, his face resembling a living skull exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still in his form-fitting blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless until the moment he lunges at the barrier, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling the actor's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer upon receiving the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller in 1989: a star wasn't born, but rather a megastar was forged. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, the actor happily remembers in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own strictly demanding Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a difficult topic for Hopkins, who recounts how his Lear was subconsciously influenced 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 title originates from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, shy and fragile youth from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a direct communicator who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and avoided displaying emotion, but had a streak of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who deeply disliked the way they had to go begging to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Due to their immense riches!” he shouts during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. But one day during an English class he was required to perform the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and his classmates. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, launched him. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was acting with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then scholarships existed to attend Rada – an opportunity for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – much to Olivier's disappointment and disapproval – but lucked into a memorable TV character playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, which he liked more compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and so survived into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.

During the second part of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He remembers being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who believes you must to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Absolutely. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a lengthy appendix composed simply