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It stands as the most iconic introduction in film history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, navigates a corridor of cells until she reaches Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. There he stands, with features like an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile wearing a snug prisoner's blue outfit. He remains motionless until the moment he propels himself toward the window, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since shown that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the iconic film in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but rather a megastar was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his strictly demanding acting coach Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a painful subject for Hopkins, who also describes how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who was angered by his time away and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a baker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who detested the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and refused to showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked how they were forced cap-in-hand to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The humility worked, temporarily. He was a poor student at his new school. However, one day in an English lesson he was required to perform the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He reasonably claims that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days scholarships existed to attend Rada – a way up for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, strong-willed son, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but stumbled upon a memorable TV character as a suspected war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to roles such as in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey on screen, that he favored to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and thus made it into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He mentions being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the chance for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star from Goodfellas? Not really. He tends to concur with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who believes it is one's responsibility to be on time, know all the crew's names and proceed with the work. Absolutely. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply