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It stands as the most memorable entrance in film history – yet the actor stays completely still.

Clarice Starling, just starting out, must walk a row of prison cells arriving at Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. The man is present, appearing as an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move before suddenly he throws himself toward the window, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, with nothing resembling Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in the 1991 thriller in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar was cemented. The character of Hannibal drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and also from his strictly demanding Rada tutor Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a difficult topic for Anthony, who also describes how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union in 1966 to his first wife, who disliked his time away and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a baker and a traditional male, a plain speaker who despised the religious hypocrites in their community and didn't believe in showing his emotions, but had a streak of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who furiously resented the necessity of going cap-in-hand to affluent family members including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and helped enroll young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. But one day in a literature class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, started his career. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then scholarships existed to go to Rada – a path to success for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre in a fit of pique – causing Olivier's regret and disapproval – but fortunately found a memorable TV character playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey on screen, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and managed to live through midlife to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

During the second part of the book he appears more reserved, more deliberate. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He mentions going out for lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Really?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks you must to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Absolutely. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A Shakespearean like him is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with a lengthy appendix composed simply