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Widely regarded as the most memorable entrance in film history – yet the actor stays completely still.

A young FBI agent, a rookie, navigates a corridor of cells until she reaches Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. He is positioned, his face resembling a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move until the moment he throws himself toward the window, producing that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. A multitude of documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that genuine criminals are often very boring, with nothing resembling Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and also from his icily exacting drama teacher his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a difficult topic for Anthony, who further explains how his King Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret about Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who was angered by his absences and drinking.

The book's name comes from an historical picture of Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He appeared lost, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in this story: a pastry chef and man's man, a direct communicator who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and didn't believe in showing his emotions, but had a streak of wistful, tearful romanticism. It was Hopkins Sr who deeply disliked how they were forced humbly to their wealthy relations such as Aunt Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with Nye Bevan and helped enroll the young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. However, one day during an English class he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield titled The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and the other students. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, started his career. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Remarkably, he left school without much hope, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days scholarships existed to attend Rada – a way up for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but fortunately found a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, that he favored compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and thus made it into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the butler Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of the book he appears more reserved, more deliberate. A few tales fall a bit flat. He mentions having lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star from Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated out of envy. Really?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who believes it is one's responsibility to get there on time, know all the crew's names and do the job. Indeed. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall from the play Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply