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Many consider it the most memorable entrance in cinematic history – and he remains utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, a rookie, navigates a row of prison cells until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. There he stands, his face resembling an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, chillingly static clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move until the moment he throws himself toward the window, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of true-crime documentaries have since shown that actual serial killers tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly an unknown upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his icily exacting Rada tutor Christopher Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a difficult topic for the actor, who further explains how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret about Abigail, the estranged daughter from his failed first union in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked his time away 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 would never do OK. 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 a traditional male, a straightforward talker who loathed the religious hypocrites at the church and avoided expressing his feelings, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented how they were forced humbly to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts while traveling there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. He was a poor student in his new institution. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that poetry, on its own, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting with the great Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, even though back then there were grants for drama school – a way up for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but lucked into an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to characters including in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, which he liked more compared to stage acting. He gave up alcohol during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it through midlife to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He mentions going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Really?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and proceed with the work. Quite so. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. If you ever repeat that 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 accompanied it. A classical performer like Hopkins must know Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply