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Many consider it the most memorable appearance in film history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, navigates the line of detention units until she reaches the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, appearing as an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, chillingly static clad in a tight prisoner's blue outfit. He stands frozen before suddenly he lunges against the glass, producing that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Countless real-crime films have since revealed that real-life murderers are often very boring, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly an unknown upon receiving the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: he was already established, but a legend was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and also from his icily exacting drama teacher Christopher Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a sore point for Anthony, who also describes how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret about Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and drinking.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in the narrative: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who despised the religious hypocrites in their community and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who furiously resented the way they had to go cap-in-hand to their rich relatives like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts while traveling there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a time. He was a poor student in his new institution. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite the verse by John Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school a no-hoper, went into acting, and shocking his family, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, even though back then scholarships existed for drama school – an opportunity for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and disapproval – but fortunately found a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career on screen, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and thus made it into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more studied. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He recalls having lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for him to absorb something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Really?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, 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: “Apologise to her! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply