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Many consider it the greatest entrance in cinematic history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

A young FBI agent, a rookie, must walk a corridor of cells until she reaches the notorious doctor's transparent prison. He is positioned, appearing as a living skull exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless until the moment he throws himself against the glass, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless real-crime films have since shown that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs during the late 80s: he was already established, but a legend was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own rigorously precise Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a painful subject for the actor, who also describes how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by deep-seated remorse concerning Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and his alcohol use.

The title originates from an old wartime photo 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, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in this story: a baker and man's man, a direct communicator who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who furiously resented how they were forced cap-in-hand to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! 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 a literature class he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he shocked the educator and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that poetry, on its own, launched him. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then scholarships existed to attend Rada – a way up for working-class actors. His father was always amazed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – much to Olivier's disappointment and disapproval – but stumbled upon a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career on screen, which he preferred compared to stage acting. And he quit booze during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his second Oscar.

During the second part of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He remembers having lunch with his fellow actor in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven by jealousy. Truly?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks you must to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Quite so. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. An actor of his caliber is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply