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Many consider it the greatest appearance in film history – while he stands utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, must walk a corridor of cells arriving at Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, appearing as a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile wearing a snug prisoner's blue outfit. He remains motionless until the moment he throws himself against the glass, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, far from Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar emerged. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his icily exacting acting coach Christopher Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a painful subject for Anthony, who further explains how his portrayal of Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret about Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked him being away and his alcohol use.

The title originates from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a plain speaker who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and avoided expressing his feelings, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who was angered by the way they had to go begging to their wealthy relations such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and helped enroll young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves during the car ride. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a time. He was a poor student at his new school. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he amazed the instructor and the other students. He says quite plausibly that verse, by itself, launched him. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated without much hope, entered the acting world, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then scholarships existed to attend Rada – a way up for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, strong-willed son, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role as a potential war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a successful acting career on screen, that he favored over theater. He gave up alcohol during the mid-70s after being a heavy drinker, and so survived into his later years to execute great performances, including Lecter, the butler Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. A few tales fall a bit flat. He recalls being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven by jealousy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it's your duty to get there on time, know all the crew's names and proceed with the work. Quite so. But he also recounts confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A straightforward and sincere nature – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with a lengthy appendix composed simply