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Many consider it the most iconic entrance in movie lore – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, navigates a row of prison cells finally encountering Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. He is positioned, appearing as a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless right up until he lunges toward the window, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since shown that genuine criminals are often very boring, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not a newcomer upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar emerged. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and also from his icily exacting acting coach his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a sore point for Anthony, who further explains how his Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret about Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage during the 60s to his first wife, who disliked him being away and drinking.

The book's name comes from an historical picture of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He felt confused, shy and fragile youth from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a plain speaker who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites of the chapel and avoided showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who deeply disliked the necessity of going humbly to affluent family members including Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and helped enroll the young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. He was a poor student in his new institution. However, one day in an English lesson he was required to perform John Masefield's poem The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He convincingly states that poems, alone, propelled him forward. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days there were grants to attend Rada – a path to success for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: upon requesting his son to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to characters including in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and thus made it into his later years to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He remembers being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the opportunity for him to absorb something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Truly?

He often portrays the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it's your duty to get there on time, know all the crew's names and proceed with the work. Absolutely. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that came with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply