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Many consider it the greatest introduction in film history – while he stands without moving a muscle.

A young FBI agent, a rookie, proceeds down the line of detention units arriving at Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. He is positioned, with features like a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, chillingly static clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move before suddenly he throws himself toward the window, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that genuine criminals are often very boring, with nothing resembling the actor's captivating film persona.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer when he landed that Oscar-winning role in the 1991 thriller in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was forged. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in this new autobiography, from Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader as recalled by his daughter, and on his own rigorously precise drama teacher his mentor Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a sore point for the actor, who also describes how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He appeared lost, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who detested the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and didn't believe in displaying emotion, yet possessed a touch of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. His father who was angered by the necessity of going cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts while traveling there. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. However, one day during an English class he was required to perform the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, launched him. This, and joining the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated without much hope, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was on stage with the great Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days there were grants for drama school – a path to success for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but stumbled upon a great TV role as a suspected 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 compared to stage acting. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and thus made it into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the steward Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He mentions having lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Really?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Quite so. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologise to her! And develop some respect. Should you ever act that way near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. An actor of his caliber surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a detailed supplement composed simply