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Many consider it the most memorable appearance in cinematic history – while he stands completely still.

A young FBI agent, a rookie, navigates a row of prison cells arriving at Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. He is positioned, with features like a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move right up until he propels himself against the glass, emitting that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous documentaries on serial killers have since shown that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, far from Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown when he landed the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: a star wasn't born, but a legend emerged. His portrayal of Lecter was based, the actor happily remembers in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader according to his daughter's memories, and also from his rigorously precise Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a painful subject for Hopkins, who further explains how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who was angered by him being away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He appeared lost, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the memorable figure here: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a plain speaker who loathed the religious hypocrites at the church and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented the way they had to go cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and could get young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The humility worked, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He convincingly states that poems, alone, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was acting with Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then scholarships existed for drama school – an opportunity for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and burst into tears.

As for the hot-tempered, strong-willed son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but lucked into an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, that he favored to the stage. And he quit booze back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the steward Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the book his character seems more elusive, more deliberate. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He recalls having lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the chance for Anthony to gain insight advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Really?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it is one's responsibility to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Indeed. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply