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Many consider it the most memorable appearance in film history – and he remains without moving a muscle.

A young FBI agent, a rookie, proceeds down a row of prison cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, appearing as a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move right up until he throws himself toward the window, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of documentaries on serial killers have since shown that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling the actor's captivating film persona.

He was not a newcomer when he landed that Oscar-winning role in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was forged. The character of Hannibal drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and on his own rigorously precise drama teacher Christopher Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a sore point for Hopkins, who also describes how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union during the 60s to his first wife, who disliked him being away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from a vintage war-era photograph of Hopkins as a toddler on the beach with his dad – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He felt confused, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a baker and a traditional male, a straightforward talker who detested the religious hypocrites at the church and didn't believe in displaying emotion, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented how they were forced cap-in-hand to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims while traveling there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. Then, during during an English class he was required to perform the poem by Masefield The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his talent emerged; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing with the great Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days scholarships existed to attend Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and criticism – but stumbled upon a memorable TV character playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which eventually resulted to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, that he favored to the stage. He stopped drinking back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his second Academy Award.

During the second part of the memoir his character seems more elusive, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He recalls having lunch with his fellow actor in the film Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Really?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it's your duty to be on time, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Absolutely. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like a person who quit alcohol but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply