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It stands as the most memorable entrance in film history – while he stands completely still.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, proceeds down a row of prison cells finally encountering Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. He is positioned, with features like an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still wearing a snug prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move right up until he lunges toward the window, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A multitude of true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer when he landed that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film during the late 80s: he was already established, but a legend was forged. The character of Hannibal was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader as recalled by his daughter, and also from his strictly demanding Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a sore point for Hopkins, who recounts how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret about Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who disliked his absences and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he wouldn't succeed. He appeared lost, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the memorable figure in the narrative: a baker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites of the chapel and didn't believe in expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented how they were forced cap-in-hand to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims while traveling there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. However, 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 stunned the teacher and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that verse, by itself, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school a no-hoper, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time financial aid was available to attend Rada – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and wept openly.

Regarding the fiery, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but lucked into an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to characters including in the film The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. He stopped drinking in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and managed to live through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the book he appears more reserved, more calculated. Certain stories fall a bit flat. He mentions being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in the film Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Anthony appears to agree with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Really?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who believes you must to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Quite so. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that came with it. A Shakespearean like him is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply