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Many consider it the greatest introduction in cinematic history – and he remains utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, navigates a corridor of cells finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, with features like a living skull filled with sinister intent, chillingly static clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless before suddenly he lunges against the glass, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. A multitude of documentaries on serial killers have since shown that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film during the late 80s: he was already established, but rather a megastar emerged. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his icily exacting drama teacher his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a painful subject for Hopkins, who also describes how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage during the 60s to Petronella Barker, who disliked him being away and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from an historical picture of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a plain speaker who despised the religious hypocrites at the church and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who deeply disliked the necessity of going humbly 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 raves in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite John Masefield's poem The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, started his career. This, and joining the YMCA drama club. Surprisingly, he exited school a no-hoper, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was on stage with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days scholarships existed to go to Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe of Anthony's global success: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which led indirectly to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, that he favored over theater. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and so survived into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of the book his character seems more elusive, more calculated. Certain stories doesn't quite come off. He mentions having lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Hardly. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated out of envy. Truly?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks you must to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Indeed. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologize to that girl! And learn some manners. You ever do that again in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with an extensive addendum composed simply