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Many consider it the most iconic appearance in movie lore – and he remains without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, must walk the line of detention units arriving at the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. There he stands, his face resembling a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, chillingly static clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He stands frozen right up until he propels himself at the barrier, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since revealed that genuine criminals tend to be quite dull, far from Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs during the late 80s: he was already established, instead, a superstar emerged. His Dr. 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 on his own icily exacting drama teacher his instructor Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a painful subject for Anthony, who recounts how his Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked his absences and his alcohol use.

The title originates 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 was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and refused to expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked the necessity of going cap-in-hand to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and helped enroll young Anthony into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims 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. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. Then, during in a literature class he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He convincingly states that poems, alone, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school a no-hoper, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was acting with Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic within 10 years. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time scholarships existed to attend Rada – a path to success for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then went into another room and burst into tears.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, which he preferred over theater. And he quit booze back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and thus made it through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Oscar.

During the second part of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Certain stories aren't entirely successful. He mentions having lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Really?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks you must to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and proceed with the work. Indeed. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And learn some manners. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply