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Widely regarded as the greatest appearance in cinematic history – yet the actor stays completely still.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, must walk a row of prison cells until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, with features like a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless right up until he propels himself against the glass, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since shown that real-life murderers are often very boring, far from Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar was forged. The character of Hannibal was inspired, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his rigorously precise acting coach his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a painful subject for Hopkins, who recounts how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret about Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who resented his time away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the memorable figure in the narrative: a bread-maker and man's man, a straightforward talker who loathed the religious hypocrites of the chapel and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who was angered by how they were forced begging to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and could get the young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. But one day in a literature class he had to recite John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He convincingly states that poems, alone, propelled him forward. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated without much hope, went into acting, and shocking his family, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic within 10 years. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then there were grants to attend Rada – an opportunity for working-class actors. His father was always amazed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but lucked into a great TV role as a potential war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in the film The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, which he liked more over theater. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the memoir he appears more reserved, more deliberate. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He mentions going out for lunch with his fellow actor in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who maintains it's your duty to be on time, know all the crew's names and do the job. Indeed. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologise 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 possibly not the combativeness that came with it. A Shakespearean like him must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a detailed supplement composed simply