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It stands as the most memorable introduction in film history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, just starting out, navigates a row of prison cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, his face resembling an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless before suddenly he throws himself against the glass, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A multitude of documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that actual serial killers tend to be quite dull, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar emerged. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own icily exacting Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a painful subject for Hopkins, who recounts how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented his time away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He appeared lost, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in the narrative: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a direct communicator who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who was angered by the way they had to go begging to their rich relatives like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with Nye Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. However, one day during an English class he had to recite the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was acting with the great Olivier at the famous theater within 10 years. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time there were grants to attend Rada – a way up for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, strong-willed son, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but stumbled upon a memorable TV character as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he liked more compared to stage acting. And he quit booze in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He remembers having lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul, who sought to advise him his performance as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for him to absorb something from the legendary star from Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Really?

He often portrays the grounded, serious thespian who maintains you must to be on time, know all the crew's names and proceed with the work. Absolutely. But he also recounts confronting an obnoxious director who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. A Shakespearean like him must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply