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Many consider it the most memorable introduction in movie lore – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, proceeds down the line of detention units arriving at Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, his face resembling a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move until the moment he lunges toward the window, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since shown that genuine criminals are often very boring, far from Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

Hopkins was hardly unrecognized at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film during the late 80s: he was already established, but a legend was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was based, the actor happily remembers in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his icily exacting drama teacher his mentor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a sore point for Hopkins, who also describes how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and his drinking habits.

The title originates from a vintage war-era photograph of Hopkins as a toddler on the beach with his dad – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a pastry chef and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who loathed the religious hypocrites in their community and avoided showing his emotions, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who deeply disliked the way they had to go cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll the young Anthony into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he shouts during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. He was a poor student at the prestigious school. Then, during 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 stunned the teacher and the other boys. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, launched him. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time there were grants for drama school – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then retreated to another room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but stumbled upon a great TV role as a suspected war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, which he liked more over theater. He stopped drinking in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live into middle age to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

During the second part of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He remembers being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for Anthony to gain insight a lesson from the famous actor from Goodfellas? Not really. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it is one's responsibility to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Quite so. However, he also describes facing a rude director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply