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Many consider it the most memorable introduction in film history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, proceeds down a corridor of cells until she reaches the notorious doctor's transparent prison. The man is present, with features like a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, chillingly static clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move right up until he throws himself against the glass, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: a star wasn't born, instead, a superstar emerged. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his rigorously precise drama teacher Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a painful subject for Anthony, who also describes how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage during the 60s to his first wife, who resented him being away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in the narrative: a baker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who loathed the religious hypocrites in their community and avoided expressing his feelings, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. His father who was angered by the necessity of going cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. Anthony struggled academically at the prestigious school. Then, during in a literature class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school without much hope, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days financial aid was available to go to Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then went into another room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but stumbled upon a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to characters including 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 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more calculated. A few tales fall a bit flat. He remembers having lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Sorvino, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven by jealousy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who believes it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and proceed with the work. Indeed. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. 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. An actor of his caliber surely knows Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with a lengthy appendix composed simply