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Widely regarded as the most memorable entrance in film history – and he remains without moving a muscle.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, must walk the line of detention units arriving at the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. He is positioned, with features like an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue prison jumpsuit. He stands frozen until the moment he throws himself against the glass, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that genuine criminals tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar was cemented. The character of Hannibal was based, the actor happily remembers in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his icily exacting drama teacher Christopher Fettes. There was also a paternal-filial aspect within the narrative; a difficult topic for Hopkins, who further explains how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from an historical picture of a young Hopkins on the beach with his dad – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in this story: a baker and man's man, a plain speaker who despised the religious hypocrites in their community and refused to expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. It was Hopkins Sr who was angered by the way they had to go humbly to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims while traveling there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. But one day in a literature class he was required to perform John Masefield's poem known as The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, launched him. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, went into acting, and shocking his family, was on stage with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days financial aid was available to attend Rada – a way up for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Regarding the fiery, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but stumbled upon an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, that he favored over theater. And he quit booze during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

During the second part of the memoir he appears more reserved, more studied. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He recalls having lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who sought to advise him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it is one's responsibility to be on time, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Indeed. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. If you ever repeat that in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply