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It stands as the most iconic appearance in cinematic history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, navigates a row of prison cells finally encountering Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, with features like a living skull filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move until the moment he lunges at the barrier, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless true-crime documentaries have since revealed that real-life murderers are often very boring, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

He was not a newcomer upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar was cemented. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own rigorously precise acting coach his mentor Fettes. The scenes also contained a paternal-filial aspect in these moments; a painful subject for Anthony, who recounts how his King Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret concerning Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented his time away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He appeared lost, shy and fragile youth from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a bread-maker and man's man, a direct communicator who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and didn't believe in displaying emotion, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked the necessity of going cap-in-hand to their rich relatives such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to the politician Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims during the car ride. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. He was a poor student at his new school. But one day in a literature class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he shocked the educator and the other students. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, started his career. This, and joining the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with the great Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days scholarships existed to attend Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role as a suspected war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which led indirectly to parts like that 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 so survived into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of the memoir his character seems more elusive, more calculated. A few tales fall a bit flat. He mentions being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for him to absorb something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with the director's criticism of Sorvino as being motivated by jealousy. Truly?

He often portrays the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it's your duty to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and do the job. Indeed. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that accompanied it. An actor of his caliber is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply