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It stands as the most memorable entrance in cinematic history – while he stands without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, proceeds down a corridor of cells until she reaches the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. He is positioned, his face resembling a living skull exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless right up until he lunges against the glass, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous real-crime films have since demonstrated that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer upon receiving the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar emerged. The character of Hannibal was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and also from his strictly demanding Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a difficult topic for Anthony, who further explains how his portrayal of Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret concerning Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who was angered by his time away and drinking.

The title originates from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He felt confused, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure here: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who despised the religious hypocrites in their community and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked how they were forced begging to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims while traveling there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The humility worked, for a time. Anthony struggled academically at the prestigious school. Then, during during an English class he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days there were grants to go to Rada – a way up for actors from humble backgrounds. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Regarding the fiery, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but lucked into an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in movies, that he favored over theater. He stopped drinking back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived through midlife to execute great performances, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson 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 his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Certain stories fall a bit flat. He remembers having lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the chance for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it's your duty to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Indeed. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like a person who quit alcohol yet perhaps not the aggression that accompanied it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a lengthy appendix composed simply