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It stands as the most iconic introduction in film history – while he stands completely still.

Clarice Starling, just starting out, must walk the line of detention units until she reaches Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. The man is present, with features like an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, chillingly static wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move right up until he propels himself toward the window, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since shown that actual serial killers are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not a newcomer at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: a star wasn't born, but a legend emerged. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own icily exacting drama teacher Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a painful subject for Hopkins, who also describes how his Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt about Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage in 1966 to his first wife, who disliked him being away and drinking.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure here: a bread-maker and man's man, a direct communicator who loathed the religious hypocrites of the chapel and didn't believe in expressing his feelings, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented the necessity of going humbly to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and could get the young Anthony into a posh school: “Due to their immense riches!” he shouts during the car ride. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, for a while. He was a poor student at the prestigious school. But one day in an English lesson he was required to perform John Masefield's poem known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that poetry, on its own, launched him. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated without much hope, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic within 10 years. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days scholarships existed for drama school – a path to success for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which eventually resulted to roles such as in the film The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, which he preferred compared to stage acting. And he quit booze in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and thus made it into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of the book he appears more reserved, more studied. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He remembers going out for lunch with his fellow actor in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for him to absorb something from the legendary star from Goodfellas? Not really. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it's your duty to get there on time, know all the crew's names and do the job. Indeed. However, he also describes facing a rude director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. An actor of his caliber must know Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply