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Widely regarded as the most memorable entrance in movie lore – while he stands utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, must walk a corridor of cells arriving at Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. He is positioned, appearing as a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still in his form-fitting blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move before suddenly he lunges toward the window, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A multitude of real-crime films have since revealed that real-life murderers are often very boring, lacking anything like the actor's captivating film persona.

He was not an unknown when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: he was already established, but a legend was cemented. The character of Hannibal was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and on his own icily exacting acting coach Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a sore point for Hopkins, who further explains how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked him being away and drinking.

The memoir's title is derived from an historical picture of Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a direct communicator who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and avoided showing his emotions, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. It was Hopkins Sr who was angered by the necessity of going begging to affluent family members including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll the young Anthony into a posh school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The humility worked, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. But one day in a literature class he had to recite the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He says quite plausibly that poetry, on its own, launched him. This, and joining the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, entered the acting world, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time scholarships existed to go to Rada – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and began crying.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, that he favored to the stage. He stopped drinking in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live into his later years to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of his autobiography his character seems more elusive, more studied. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He recalls having lunch alongside his cast mate in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who sought to advise him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Really?

He often portrays the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name 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. 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. An actor of his caliber is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall from the play Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply