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

The FBI trainee, just starting out, proceeds down the line of detention units until she reaches the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, appearing as a living skull radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He stands frozen until the moment he throws himself toward the window, producing that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since revealed that genuine criminals are often very boring, lacking anything like the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not a newcomer at the time he got the part that won him an Oscar in the iconic film during the late 80s: he was already established, instead, a superstar emerged. His portrayal of Lecter was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his strictly demanding Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a sore point for Anthony, who also describes how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse about Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who disliked his absences and his alcohol use.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in this story: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a direct communicator who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and didn't believe in showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who was angered by the necessity of going cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with Nye Bevan and could get the young Anthony into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. But one day in an English lesson he was required to perform John Masefield's poem The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, started his career. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated without much hope, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater within 10 years. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days scholarships existed to attend Rada – a path to success for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from the play Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but lucked into a memorable TV character as a potential war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, that he favored over theater. He gave up alcohol in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into middle age to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of the memoir his character seems more elusive, more studied. Certain stories doesn't quite come off. He remembers going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven by jealousy. Truly?

He often portrays the grounded, serious thespian who believes it's your duty to get there on time, know all the crew's names and do the job. Indeed. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologize to that girl! 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 possibly not the combativeness that came with it. An actor of his caliber surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with an extensive addendum composed simply