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Widely regarded as the most iconic appearance in film history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, navigates a row of prison cells finally encountering Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. He is positioned, with features like a living skull exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He stands frozen before suddenly he propels himself against the glass, emitting that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous real-crime films have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are often very boring, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

He was not a newcomer at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film during the late 80s: he was already established, but rather a megastar was forged. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own strictly demanding drama teacher Christopher Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a painful subject for Anthony, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse about Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who disliked his absences and his alcohol use.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a plain speaker who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the necessity of going humbly to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and could get young Anthony into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The humility worked, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. However, one day during an English class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he shocked the educator and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Surprisingly, he exited school without much hope, went into acting, and shocking his family, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic within 10 years. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then scholarships existed to attend Rada – a way up for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and wept openly.

Regarding the fiery, strong-willed son, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – causing Olivier's regret and criticism – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey on screen, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze back in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson alongside Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He recalls going out for lunch with his fellow actor in the film Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the chance for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor from Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who believes it's your duty to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Quite so. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And develop some respect. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that accompanied it. An actor of his caliber must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with an extensive addendum composed simply