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It stands as the greatest appearance in film history – while he stands utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, just starting out, must walk a row of prison cells arriving at Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. The man is present, with features like an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move right up until he throws himself against the glass, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that actual serial killers tend to be quite dull, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in the iconic film during the late 80s: he was already established, instead, a superstar was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and also from his icily exacting drama teacher his mentor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a painful subject for Anthony, who also describes how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt about Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage during the 60s to his first wife, who was angered by his absences and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the kid who maybe thought he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a baker and a tough individual, a direct communicator who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and didn't believe in showing his emotions, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked the necessity of going humbly to affluent family members including Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the famous Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves while traveling there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. However, one day during an English class he had to recite the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he shocked the educator and his classmates. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days scholarships existed for drama school – a way up for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, strong-willed son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a fit of pique – much to Olivier's disappointment and criticism – but stumbled upon a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, which he preferred compared to stage acting. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and so survived into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Certain stories aren't entirely successful. He remembers going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who maintains you must to get there on time, remember every crew member's name and do the job. Indeed. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And develop some respect. 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. An actor of his caliber must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply