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Many consider it the most iconic appearance in film history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, must walk the line of detention units until she reaches Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, with features like a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move right up until he lunges at the barrier, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous real-crime films have since demonstrated that real-life murderers are often very boring, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: a star wasn't born, but rather a megastar was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader according to his daughter's memories, and on his own rigorously precise drama teacher his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a painful subject for Hopkins, who also describes how his Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union back in 1966 to his first wife, who resented him being away and his alcohol use.

The title originates from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He appeared lost, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a baker and a traditional male, a plain speaker who detested the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and didn't believe in displaying emotion, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who was angered by the way they had to go humbly to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims while traveling there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. But one day in a literature class he was required to perform the poem by Masefield titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he shocked the educator and the other students. He says quite plausibly that poetry, on its own, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, entered the acting world, and shocking his family, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He more or less did it on his own, even though back then there were grants to go to Rada – an opportunity for working-class actors. His father was always amazed of Anthony's global success: upon requesting his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then went into another room and burst into tears.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre in a fit of pique – causing Olivier's regret and disapproval – but fortunately found a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, that he favored to the stage. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live into middle age to execute great performances, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He mentions going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who wanted to tell him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor from Goodfellas? Not really. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated by jealousy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who believes it's your duty to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Absolutely. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And develop some respect. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A straightforward and sincere nature – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply