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Many consider it the most iconic entrance in film history – yet the actor stays completely still.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, navigates the line of detention units arriving at the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, with features like a living skull radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless before suddenly he throws himself toward the window, emitting that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that genuine criminals are often very boring, lacking anything like the actor's captivating film persona.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar was cemented. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, the actor happily remembers in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader according to his daughter's memories, and on his own strictly demanding Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a difficult topic for Anthony, who also describes how his portrayal of Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage during the 60s to his first wife, who disliked his time away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He appeared lost, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure here: a pastry chef and man's man, a plain speaker who detested the religious hypocrites of the chapel and didn't believe in displaying emotion, but also exhibited nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented the way they had to go begging to their rich relatives like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and could get young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a time. He was a poor student at the prestigious school. But one day in a literature class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he amazed the instructor and the other students. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, entered the acting world, and shocking his family, was acting with Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time financial aid was available to attend Rada – an opportunity for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and burst into tears.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a fit of pique – causing Olivier's regret and disapproval – but stumbled upon an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in movies, that he favored compared to stage acting. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and thus made it into his later years to execute great performances, including Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of his autobiography his character seems more elusive, more studied. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He remembers being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who sought to advise him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the chance for him to absorb something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated out of envy. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it's your duty to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Quite so. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director 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! Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. An actor of his caliber surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply