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Widely regarded as the greatest introduction in film history – while he stands completely still.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, must walk the line of detention units arriving at the notorious doctor's transparent prison. He is positioned, his face resembling a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He stands frozen before suddenly he throws himself toward the window, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that real-life murderers are often very boring, far from the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly an unknown at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: a star wasn't born, but rather a megastar was forged. His portrayal of Lecter was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and also from his icily exacting acting coach his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a painful subject for Anthony, who also describes how his portrayal of Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage during the 60s to Petronella Barker, who resented his time away and his drinking habits.

The title originates from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He felt confused, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in this story: a baker and a tough individual, a plain speaker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and avoided showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who was angered by how they were forced humbly to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. However, 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 reasonably claims that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school without much hope, entered the acting world, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time scholarships existed to attend Rada – a way up for working-class actors. His father was always amazed of Anthony's global success: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and burst into tears.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but lucked into an excellent television part playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, which he liked more over theater. And he quit booze during the mid-70s after being a heavy drinker, and thus made it through midlife to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the memoir he appears more reserved, more studied. Certain stories doesn't quite come off. He recalls being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for Anthony to gain insight a lesson from the famous actor of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. Anthony appears to agree with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Really?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it's your duty to be on time, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Indeed. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologise to her! And develop some respect. You ever do that again in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! He appears to be someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply