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It stands as the greatest entrance in film history – and he remains utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, proceeds down a corridor of cells arriving at Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. He is positioned, his face resembling a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He stands frozen right up until he propels himself at the barrier, producing that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that genuine criminals are often very boring, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar emerged. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his rigorously precise Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a sore point for Anthony, who recounts how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by deep-seated remorse concerning Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who was angered by his absences and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from a vintage war-era photograph of Hopkins as a toddler playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a baker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and refused to showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked the way they had to go humbly to their rich relatives like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the famous Bevan and could get young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims while traveling there. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. He was a poor student at his new school. But one day in a literature class he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he shocked the educator and the other students. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, propelled him forward. This, and joining the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic within 10 years. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time financial aid was available to attend Rada – an opportunity for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe of Anthony's global success: when he asked Anthony to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and wept openly.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but fortunately found an excellent television part playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, which he liked more to the stage. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and so survived through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He recalls being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. He tends to concur with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Is that so?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who believes it's your duty to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Absolutely. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologize to that girl! And develop some respect. You ever do that again in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Anthony comes across as an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a detailed supplement composed simply