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Widely regarded as the most iconic appearance in film history – yet the actor stays completely still.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, proceeds down a row of prison cells finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, with features like a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, chillingly static wearing a snug prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move until the moment he propels himself at the barrier, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of real-crime films have since revealed that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized when he landed that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own icily exacting drama teacher his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a sore point for Anthony, who recounts how his King Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who disliked his time away 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 kid who maybe thought he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, shy and fragile youth from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure here: a pastry chef and man's man, a straightforward talker who loathed the religious hypocrites of the chapel and avoided expressing his feelings, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who deeply disliked the necessity of going begging to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts during the car ride. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The grovelling paid off, for a time. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. But one day in a literature class he was required to perform John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He convincingly states that poems, alone, launched him. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated without much hope, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, even though back then scholarships existed to attend Rada – a path to success for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and began crying.

Regarding the fiery, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – causing Olivier's regret and criticism – but fortunately found a memorable TV character playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey on screen, that he favored to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the steward Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Certain stories fall a bit flat. He mentions being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in the film Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the opportunity for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who believes it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Absolutely. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but maybe not the belligerence that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's speech regarding Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with an extensive addendum composed simply