🔗 Share this article

It stands as the greatest entrance in film history – while he stands utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, proceeds down the line of detention units arriving at the notorious doctor's transparent prison. He is positioned, with features like an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless right up until he lunges against the glass, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous real-crime films have since revealed that actual serial killers are often very boring, far from Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer when he landed the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: he was already established, but rather a megastar emerged. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, the actor happily remembers in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own icily exacting Rada tutor Christopher Fettes. There was also a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a painful subject for Hopkins, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt about Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union during the 60s 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 Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a pastry chef and a tough individual, a direct communicator who detested the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and refused to showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who was angered by how they were forced humbly to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the famous Bevan and helped enroll the young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. But one day in a literature class he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, launched him. This, and joining the dramatic society at the YMCA. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing with the great Olivier at the famous theater within 10 years. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days scholarships existed to attend Rada – a way up for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and burst into tears.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – causing Olivier's regret and criticism – but stumbled upon a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, which he preferred to the stage. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it through midlife to execute great performances, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more studied. Certain stories aren't entirely successful. He mentions going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in the film Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the opportunity for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor from Goodfellas? Not really. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated out of envy. Truly?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it's your duty to be on time, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Indeed. However, he also describes facing a rude director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And learn some manners. You ever do that again near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. A Shakespearean like him must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply