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Widely regarded as the greatest appearance in film history – yet the actor stays completely still.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, must walk the line of detention units until she reaches the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, with features like a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He stands frozen right up until he lunges toward the window, making that distinctive snarling-hissing 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 powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs during the late 80s: he was already established, but a legend emerged. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his strictly demanding drama teacher his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a painful subject for Hopkins, who further explains how his Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage during the 60s to Petronella Barker, who disliked his absences and his alcohol use.

The title originates from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He felt confused, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who despised the religious hypocrites of the chapel and didn't believe in showing his emotions, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who was angered by the way they had to go begging to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. However, one day during an English class he had to recite John Masefield's poem The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he amazed the instructor and the other boys. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time financial aid was available to go to Rada – a way up for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then went into another room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, strong-willed son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and criticism – but stumbled upon a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and thus made it through midlife to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Academy Award.

During the second part of the memoir his character seems more elusive, more deliberate. A few tales fall a bit flat. He remembers going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated by jealousy. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it is one's responsibility to be on time, know all the crew's names and do the job. Absolutely. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologise to her! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that came with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with an extensive addendum composed simply