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Many consider it the greatest appearance in movie lore – yet the actor stays completely still.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, navigates the line of detention units finally encountering the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, appearing as a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move until the moment he propels himself against the glass, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless real-crime films have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are often very boring, far from Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown upon receiving the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own strictly demanding Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a painful subject for Anthony, who recounts how his King Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage during the 60s to his first wife, who disliked his time away and drinking.

The title originates from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a plain speaker who despised the religious hypocrites in their community and didn't believe in expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked how they were forced humbly to their rich relatives like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the politician Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims during the car ride. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. However, one day in a literature class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other students. He reasonably claims that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school a no-hoper, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with the great Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time scholarships existed to attend Rada – a path to success 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 Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – much to Olivier's disappointment and criticism – but lucked into an excellent television part playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, that he favored to the stage. And he quit booze back in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of the memoir he appears more reserved, more studied. A few tales fall a bit flat. He remembers being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Really?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks you must to be on time, remember every crew member's name and proceed with the work. Quite so. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And develop some respect. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be someone who gave up drink yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply