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Widely regarded as the most iconic appearance in film history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, just starting out, must walk a corridor of cells arriving at the notorious doctor's transparent prison. He is positioned, his face resembling a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, chillingly static clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He stands frozen before suddenly he propels himself against the glass, emitting that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since shown that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, far from the actor's captivating film persona.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but rather a megastar emerged. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader according to his daughter's memories, as well as his rigorously precise Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a difficult topic for Hopkins, who recounts how his King Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret concerning Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union during the 60s with Petronella Barker, who disliked his absences and drinking.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a straightforward talker who detested the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and refused to expressing his feelings, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. It was Hopkins Sr who deeply disliked the way they had to go humbly to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. But one day in an English lesson he was required to perform the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other boys. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, entered the acting world, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting with the great Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days scholarships existed to attend 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 the play Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company out of frustration – causing Olivier's regret and criticism – but stumbled upon an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which led indirectly to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career on screen, which he liked more over theater. He stopped drinking back in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and so survived into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

During the second part of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He remembers having lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for Anthony to gain insight advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated out of envy. Truly?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains you must to be on time, know all the crew's names and do the job. Quite so. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply