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Many consider it the most iconic entrance in movie lore – and he remains utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, proceeds down a corridor of cells finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, appearing as an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He stands frozen until the moment he lunges against the glass, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that genuine criminals are often very boring, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

Hopkins was hardly unrecognized at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in the iconic film in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar emerged. His portrayal of Lecter was inspired, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own icily exacting acting coach Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a painful subject for Hopkins, who also describes how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage during the 60s with Petronella Barker, who disliked him being away and his alcohol use.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He felt confused, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the memorable figure here: a baker and man's man, a straightforward talker who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites of the chapel and refused to expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who was angered by the way they had to go cap-in-hand to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. However, one day during an English class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other students. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, launched him. This, and joining the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, even though back then scholarships existed to go to Rada – a way up for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and disapproval – but fortunately found a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, which he liked more over theater. And he quit booze in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and so survived through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Certain stories doesn't quite come off. He recalls going out for lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated by jealousy. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and proceed with the work. Quite so. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologise to her! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent 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