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Many consider it the greatest introduction in cinematic history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, navigates a corridor of cells arriving at Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, with features like a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless right up until he lunges at the barrier, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since revealed that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, far from Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly an unknown upon receiving the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar was forged. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his icily exacting drama teacher Christopher Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a painful subject for Anthony, who recounts how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who was angered by his absences and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a bread-maker and man's man, a straightforward talker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and didn't believe in showing his emotions, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who was angered by the way they had to go humbly to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and could get the young Anthony into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. But one day in a literature class he was required to perform the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other students. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated without much hope, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time financial aid was available to attend Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His father was always amazed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and began crying.

Regarding the fiery, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but stumbled upon a memorable TV character playing an alleged war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which led indirectly to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he liked more over theater. He stopped drinking back in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and so survived into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of his autobiography his character seems more elusive, more deliberate. Certain stories doesn't quite come off. He recalls going out for lunch with his fellow actor in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of the Goodfellas fame? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it's your duty to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Indeed. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. Should you ever act that way in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Anthony comes across as an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. An actor of his caliber surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply