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Widely regarded as the greatest entrance in film history – and he remains completely still.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, must walk a corridor of cells until she reaches the notorious doctor's transparent prison. The man is present, appearing as an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless until the moment he propels himself toward the window, producing that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since shown that real-life murderers are often very boring, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film during the late 80s: it wasn't his debut, but rather a megastar was forged. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and also from his rigorously precise acting coach his mentor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a sore point for Anthony, who further explains how his portrayal of Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage during the 60s with Petronella Barker, who disliked his absences and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites in their community and avoided showing his emotions, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who was angered by how they were forced begging to their rich relatives like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into a posh school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. But one day in a literature class he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield titled The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He says quite plausibly that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated without much hope, entered the acting world, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days financial aid was available for drama school – a path to success for working-class actors. His father was always amazed of Anthony's global success: when he asked Anthony to recite the Yorick speech from the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, which he liked more to the stage. He gave up alcohol 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 old man with dementia in The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of the memoir he appears more reserved, more deliberate. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He remembers going out for lunch with his fellow actor 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 Anthony to gain insight a lesson from the famous actor of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Is that so?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it's your duty to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and proceed with the work. Absolutely. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply