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Many consider it the greatest appearance in film history – and he remains utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, must walk a row of prison cells until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, his face resembling an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless right up until he lunges at the barrier, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that real-life murderers are often very boring, lacking anything like the actor's commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly an unknown when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: a star wasn't born, but a legend was forged. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his rigorously precise Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a painful subject for the actor, who recounts how his King Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt about Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union in 1966 to his first wife, who was angered by him being away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a baker and a traditional male, a straightforward talker who detested the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and avoided displaying emotion, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who was angered by the necessity of going begging to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The humility worked, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. However, one day in an English lesson he had to recite the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, started his career. This, and joining the dramatic society at the YMCA. Remarkably, he left school without much hope, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with the great Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days scholarships existed to attend Rada – a way up for performers from modest means. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and burst into tears.

As for the hot-tempered, strong-willed son, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and disapproval – but stumbled upon a great TV role as a potential war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, that he favored compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live through midlife to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He recalls having lunch with his fellow actor in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Really?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks you must to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Quite so. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply