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Widely regarded as the greatest introduction in movie lore – and he remains utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, proceeds down a row of prison cells finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, with features like an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, chillingly static in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move until the moment he propels himself at the barrier, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that actual serial killers tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but rather a megastar was forged. The character of Hannibal was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his icily exacting Rada tutor Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a sore point for the actor, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret about Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked his time away and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He appeared lost, isolated and sensitive child raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a bread-maker and man's man, a straightforward talker who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and avoided showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. It was Hopkins Sr who was angered by the way they had to go cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and helped enroll the young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves while traveling there. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. However, one day in a literature class he was required to perform the verse by John Masefield The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He says quite plausibly that verse, by itself, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time there were grants for drama school – a path to success for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then went into another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, strong-willed son, he quit the National Theatre company out of frustration – 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 successful acting career in movies, which he preferred over theater. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and thus made it into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He mentions being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and do the job. Absolutely. However, he also describes facing a rude director who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol yet perhaps not the aggression that came with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply