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Many consider it the most memorable entrance in movie lore – while he stands utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, must walk the line of detention units until she reaches Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, with features like a living skull exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move before suddenly he lunges at the barrier, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A multitude of documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, far from Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: he was already established, but a legend was cemented. The character of Hannibal was based, the actor happily remembers in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own rigorously precise acting coach Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a difficult topic for Anthony, who recounts how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his failed first union during the 60s to his first wife, who resented his absences and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in this story: a bread-maker and man's man, a direct communicator who detested the religious hypocrites at the church and avoided showing his emotions, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who deeply disliked how they were forced cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and could get the young Anthony into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves during the car ride. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. Then, during during an English class he had to recite the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his talent emerged; he shocked the educator and the other students. He says quite plausibly that poetry, on its own, propelled him forward. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, 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 the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, strong-willed son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey on screen, which he liked more over theater. He stopped drinking in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and thus made it through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of the book he appears more reserved, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He recalls going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Truly?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who believes you must to be on time, remember every crew member's name and do the job. Indeed. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologise to her! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be someone who gave up drink yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. An actor of his caliber surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply