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Many consider it the most memorable appearance in cinematic history – and he remains utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, must walk a row of prison cells until she reaches Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, his face resembling a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless right up until he propels himself at the barrier, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of true-crime documentaries have since shown that actual serial killers are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling 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 in 1989: he was already established, but a legend emerged. The character of Hannibal drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and on his own rigorously precise drama teacher his mentor Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a painful subject for Hopkins, who also describes how his Lear was subconsciously influenced by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and his alcohol use.

The title originates from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites in their community and didn't believe in showing his emotions, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the necessity of going begging to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and could get the young Anthony into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves while traveling there. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – 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 with low prospects, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic within 10 years. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time there were grants to attend Rada – a way up for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he liked more to the stage. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and so survived through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the latter half of the memoir he appears more reserved, more calculated. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He mentions going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the moment for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it's your duty to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Indeed. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. You ever do that again near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply