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It stands as the most memorable appearance in film history – and he remains utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, a rookie, navigates the line of detention units arriving at the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. He is positioned, his face resembling a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move right up until he lunges toward the window, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. A multitude of documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are usually uninteresting, far from Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

He wasn't exactly an unknown when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar was cemented. The character of Hannibal was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own rigorously precise drama teacher Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a sore point for Hopkins, who further explains how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage during the 60s with Petronella Barker, who resented 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 was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a pastry chef and man's man, a plain speaker who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and refused to displaying emotion, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. It was Hopkins Sr who deeply disliked the necessity of going humbly to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and was able to secure young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves during the car ride. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The humility worked, for a time. Anthony struggled academically at the prestigious school. However, one day in an English lesson he was required to perform the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he amazed the instructor and the other boys. He convincingly states that poems, alone, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, entered the acting world, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage with Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days scholarships existed to go to Rada – a way up for actors from humble backgrounds. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – causing Olivier's regret and disapproval – but stumbled upon an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, that he favored to the stage. He stopped drinking back in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and thus made it into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Academy Award.

During the second part of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He recalls having lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the chance for Anthony to gain insight a lesson from the famous actor of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it is one's responsibility to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Absolutely. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. Should you ever act that way near me, I'll alter your appearance!” He appears to be someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A straightforward and sincere nature – he always tells the truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with an extensive addendum composed simply