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Many consider it the most memorable entrance in cinematic history – and he remains completely still.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, proceeds down a corridor of cells arriving at Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. The man is present, with features like a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless right up until he throws himself against the glass, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless true-crime documentaries have since revealed that real-life murderers are often very boring, lacking anything like Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly unrecognized at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film back in 1989: he was already established, but a legend was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin according to his daughter's memories, as well as his strictly demanding drama teacher Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a sore point for Hopkins, who further explains how his portrayal of Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who disliked his absences and drinking.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. 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 man's man, a direct communicator who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites in their community and avoided expressing his feelings, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented how they were forced cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and could get the young Anthony into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves while traveling there. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. He was a poor student at his new school. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that poetry, on its own, started his career. This, and joining the dramatic society at the YMCA. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, entered the acting world, and shocking his family, was on stage with the great Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days there were grants to attend Rada – an opportunity for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but lucked into an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to roles such as in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he liked more compared to stage acting. And he quit booze back in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and so survived into middle age to execute great performances, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his second Academy Award.

During the second part of the book he appears more reserved, more calculated. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He mentions being taken out to lunch by his co-star in the film Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for Anthony to gain insight advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Truly?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who maintains it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and do the job. Indeed. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply