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

A young FBI agent, just starting out, proceeds down the line of detention units until she reaches the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. He is positioned, with features like a living skull radiating satanic malice, chillingly static clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless right up until he propels himself against the glass, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that genuine criminals are often very boring, with nothing resembling the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not a newcomer upon receiving the part that won him an Oscar in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: a star wasn't born, but rather a megastar was forged. His portrayal of Lecter was inspired, the actor happily remembers in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own rigorously precise acting coach Christopher Fettes. There was also a paternal-filial aspect in these moments; a sore point for Anthony, who further explains how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union during the 60s with Petronella Barker, who was angered by him being away and drinking.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a plain speaker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented the way they had to go humbly to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves while traveling there. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. He was a poor student at the prestigious school. Then, during in a literature class he had to recite the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his talent emerged; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, entered the acting world, and shocking his family, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic within 10 years. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days scholarships existed to go to Rada – a way up for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre in a fit of pique – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role as a suspected war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in movies, which he liked more to the stage. And he quit booze back in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, including 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.

During the second part of the memoir he appears more reserved, more studied. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He mentions going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who believes you must to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Absolutely. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologize to that girl! And develop some respect. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A straightforward and sincere nature – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply