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It stands as the greatest entrance in movie lore – while he stands completely still.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, proceeds down the line of detention units arriving at Hannibal Lecter's transparent prison. He is positioned, with features like an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless until the moment he propels himself toward the window, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: a star wasn't born, but a legend was cemented. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and also from his rigorously precise acting coach his mentor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a painful subject for Hopkins, who further explains how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union in 1966 to his first wife, who resented his time away and drinking.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He felt confused, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a baker and a tough individual, a plain speaker who detested the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and refused to expressing his feelings, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked the way they had to go cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. He was a poor student at his new school. However, one day during an English class he had to recite the poem by Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he shocked the educator and the other boys. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, started his career. This, and joining the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, entered the acting world, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic within 10 years. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time there were grants to go to Rada – an opportunity for actors from humble backgrounds. His father was always amazed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: on asking his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and began crying.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but stumbled upon an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, which he liked more over theater. And he quit booze in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the steward Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He recalls being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who believes it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Quite so. However, he also describes facing a rude director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply