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Many consider it the greatest introduction in cinematic history – and he remains utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, proceeds down a row of prison cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, with features like a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, chillingly static clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He stands frozen right up until he lunges toward the window, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous documentaries on serial killers have since shown that genuine criminals tend to be quite dull, with nothing resembling the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar was forged. The character of Hannibal was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own rigorously precise drama teacher his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a sore point for Anthony, who recounts how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union back in 1966 to his first wife, who resented his absences and drinking.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who was angered by the way they had to go begging to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll young Anthony into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims while traveling there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he shocked the educator and the other students. He convincingly states that poems, alone, started his career. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing with the great Olivier at the renowned Old Vic within 10 years. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days financial aid was available to go to Rada – a way up for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from the play Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – much to Olivier's disappointment and disapproval – but stumbled upon a memorable TV character as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and so survived into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the latter half of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. A few tales fall a bit flat. He recalls having lunch by his co-star in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it's your duty to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and proceed with the work. Indeed. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him must know Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply