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It stands as the most iconic entrance in film history – while he stands utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, must walk the line of detention units arriving at Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, his face resembling an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless right up until he throws himself toward the window, producing that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of real-crime films have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are often very boring, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and also from his icily exacting drama teacher his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a painful subject for Anthony, who further explains how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who was angered by his absences and his drinking habits.

The title originates from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in this story: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a plain speaker who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and avoided displaying emotion, yet possessed a touch of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. It was Hopkins Sr who deeply disliked the way they had to go cap-in-hand to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts during the car ride. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. He was a poor student in his new institution. But one day in a literature class he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other students. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, entered the acting world, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time there were grants to go to Rada – a way up for working-class actors. His father was always amazed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then retreated to another room and wept openly.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but stumbled upon an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, that he favored compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived into middle age to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia 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 recalls being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who believes you must to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Absolutely. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. An actor of his caliber must know Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply