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Widely regarded as the most memorable entrance in movie lore – while he stands without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, proceeds down a corridor of cells until she reaches the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, his face resembling a living skull filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless until the moment he propels himself against the glass, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: a star wasn't born, but a legend was forged. The character of Hannibal was inspired, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his rigorously precise Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a painful subject for the actor, who recounts how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who disliked his time away and drinking.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He appeared lost, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a baker and man's man, a straightforward talker who detested the religious hypocrites in their community and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the way they had to go cap-in-hand to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure young Anthony into a posh school: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. He was a poor student at his new school. Then, during in an English lesson he was required to perform the poem by Masefield titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and his classmates. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, launched him. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then financial aid was available to attend Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His father was always amazed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and burst into tears.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to roles such as in the film The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, which he preferred to the stage. He stopped drinking in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He remembers having lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Quite so. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. You ever do that again near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A straightforward and sincere nature – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply