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Widely regarded as the most memorable entrance in cinematic history – while he stands utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, navigates a row of prison cells arriving at Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. He is positioned, with features like an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move until the moment he lunges toward the window, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous real-crime films have since revealed that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly 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 was forged. The character of Hannibal was based, the actor happily remembers in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and also from his icily exacting Rada tutor Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a painful subject for Anthony, who recounts how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret about Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who resented his absences and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an historical picture of Hopkins as a toddler on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He appeared lost, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in this story: a pastry chef and man's man, a direct communicator who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites of the chapel and avoided expressing his feelings, but also exhibited nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. His father who furiously resented the necessity of going cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves while traveling there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. However, one day in an English lesson he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was acting with Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, even though back then there were grants to attend Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe in a fit of pique – much to Olivier's disappointment and disapproval – but fortunately found a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he liked more over theater. He stopped drinking back in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and managed to live through midlife to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He recalls going out for lunch by his co-star in the film Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as driven by jealousy. Really?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it is one's responsibility to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Indeed. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. An actor of his caliber is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A straightforward and sincere nature – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a detailed supplement composed simply