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

A young FBI agent, just starting out, must walk a row of prison cells until she reaches the notorious doctor's transparent prison. He is positioned, appearing as a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless right up until he throws himself against the glass, emitting that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that genuine criminals tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like the actor's commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film in 1989: a star wasn't born, instead, a superstar was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his rigorously precise acting coach Christopher Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a painful subject for Anthony, who also describes 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 resented his time away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who despised the religious hypocrites at the church and avoided expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the necessity of going cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. However, one day in an English lesson he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he shocked the educator and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, propelled him forward. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, entered the acting world, and shocking his family, was on stage with the great Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, even though back then financial aid was available to go to Rada – a way up for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then went into another room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – much to Olivier's disappointment and criticism – but stumbled upon a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, which he preferred over theater. And he quit booze in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He remembers being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for him to absorb something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Really?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it is one's responsibility to get there on time, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Quite so. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that came with it. A Shakespearean like him is aware of Cornwall's speech regarding Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply