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Many consider it the most memorable appearance in cinematic history – yet the actor stays completely still.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, navigates the line of detention units finally encountering the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. There he stands, with features like an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile wearing a snug prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move before suddenly he lunges at the barrier, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous real-crime films have since revealed that real-life murderers are often very boring, far from Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar emerged. His portrayal of Lecter was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his icily exacting Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a sore point for the actor, who further explains how his Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who was angered by his absences and drinking.

The title originates from an historical picture of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, shy and fragile youth from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in this story: a baker and a traditional male, a plain speaker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and avoided displaying emotion, yet possessed a touch of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. His father who deeply disliked the way they had to go humbly to affluent family members including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and could get young Anthony into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts during the car ride. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. He was a poor student at the prestigious school. Then, during in a literature class he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He convincingly states that poems, alone, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Surprisingly, he exited school without much hope, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with 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 for drama school – a way up for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the 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 criticism – but stumbled upon an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which led indirectly to roles such as in the film The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in movies, that he favored over theater. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and so survived into his later years to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the steward Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of his autobiography his character seems more elusive, more deliberate. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He remembers being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who sought to advise him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Really?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who believes it's your duty to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Indeed. But he also recounts facing a rude director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A Shakespearean like him is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply