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Many consider it the most memorable entrance in film history – while he stands completely still.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, must walk a corridor of cells arriving at the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. He is positioned, with features like an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move until the moment he propels himself against the glass, producing that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of documentaries on serial killers have since shown that actual serial killers are often very boring, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his rigorously precise Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a paternal-filial aspect within the narrative; a difficult topic for Hopkins, who also describes how his Lear was subconsciously influenced by deep-seated remorse about Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who was angered by his time away and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he would never do OK. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a straightforward talker who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and didn't believe in displaying emotion, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked how they were forced begging to their wealthy relations such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. Then, during in a literature class he was required to perform the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He says quite plausibly that poetry, on its own, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He more or less did it on his own, even though back then there were grants to attend Rada – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from the play Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but stumbled upon a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey on screen, that he favored over theater. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and managed to live into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of the memoir his character seems more elusive, more calculated. Certain stories fall a bit flat. He recalls having lunch by his co-star in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of the Goodfellas fame? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Truly?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who believes you must to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Indeed. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he is compelled to be honest!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply