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Many consider it the greatest entrance in movie lore – while he stands without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, must walk a row of prison cells until she reaches Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. The man is present, appearing as a living skull filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile clad in a tight prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move until the moment he propels himself toward the window, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous real-crime films have since revealed that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling the actor's commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the iconic film in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar was cemented. The character of Hannibal drew influence, the actor happily remembers in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own rigorously precise acting coach Christopher Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a sore point for the actor, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was subconsciously influenced by deep-seated remorse about Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage during the 60s to his first wife, who was angered by his absences and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the boy who perhaps believed he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and avoided showing his emotions, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who was angered by the way they had to go begging to affluent family members including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and could get young Anthony into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves during the car ride. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. Then, during in a literature class he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, started his career. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Surprisingly, he exited school a no-hoper, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He more or less did it on his own, even though back then there were grants to go to Rada – a way up for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe of Anthony's global success: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre in a fit of pique – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey on screen, which he liked more to the stage. He stopped drinking in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and managed to live into his later years to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the steward Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the latter half of the book he appears more reserved, more studied. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He mentions having lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Really?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who thinks you must to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Quite so. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologise to her! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be someone who gave up drink but possibly not the combativeness that came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a detailed supplement composed simply