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It stands as the most iconic appearance in cinematic history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, proceeds down the line of detention units until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, with features like an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless right up until he throws himself at the barrier, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like the actor's commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly an unknown upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and on his own rigorously precise acting coach Christopher Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a difficult topic for the actor, who also describes how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by painful regret concerning Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to his first wife, who was angered by him being away and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He appeared lost, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a baker and a tough individual, a plain speaker who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites of the chapel and didn't believe in showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who was angered by how they were forced cap-in-hand to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the politician Nye Bevan and could get the young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims during the car ride. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, for a while. He was a poor student at his new school. Then, during in an English lesson he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, entered the acting world, and shocking his family, was acting with the great Olivier at the Old Vic within 10 years. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time financial aid was available to attend Rada – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to recite the Yorick speech from the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but stumbled upon a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, which he liked more over theater. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and so survived into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of the book he appears more reserved, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He mentions going out for lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Is that so?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who maintains it's your duty to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Absolutely. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A Shakespearean like him must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply