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It stands as the most memorable entrance in film history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, proceeds down a corridor of cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. There he stands, with features like an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move right up until he propels himself toward the window, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since shown that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in the iconic film back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was cemented. The character of Hannibal was inspired, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own icily exacting acting coach Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a painful subject for Hopkins, who also describes how his portrayal of Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and drinking.

The book's name comes 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 would never do OK. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in this story: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a straightforward talker who detested the religious hypocrites of the chapel and refused to showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who was angered by how they were forced cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. Anthony struggled academically at the prestigious school. Then, during in an English lesson he was required to perform John Masefield's poem known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater within 10 years. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time scholarships existed to go to Rada – a path to success for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and burst into tears.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and criticism – but lucked into a memorable TV character as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, that he favored over theater. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and so survived into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of the memoir his character seems more elusive, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He remembers having lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul, who sought to advise him his performance as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star from Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Is that so?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it's your duty to be on time, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Quite so. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with an extensive addendum composed simply