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Many consider it the most memorable entrance in movie lore – while he stands without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, navigates the line of detention units finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. He is positioned, appearing as a living skull exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless until the moment he lunges at the barrier, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. A multitude of true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

He was not an unknown when he landed that Oscar-winning role in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was forged. His Dr. Lecter was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own icily exacting drama teacher his mentor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a painful subject for Hopkins, who recounts how his Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented his time away and drinking.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he would never do OK. He felt confused, lonely, vulnerable little boy from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in this story: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a plain speaker who detested the Bible-punching hypocrites of the chapel and avoided expressing his feelings, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented how they were forced humbly to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. Then, during in a literature class he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated without much hope, went into acting, and shocking his family, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time scholarships existed for drama school – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: on asking his son to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then went into another room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, strong-willed son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and disapproval – but fortunately found an excellent television part playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to characters including in the film The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, which he liked more over theater. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Academy Award.

During the second part of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more calculated. A few tales fall a bit flat. He recalls going out for lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for him to absorb something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated by jealousy. Really?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains you must to get there on time, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Indeed. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he is compelled to be honest!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a detailed supplement composed simply