🔗 Share this article

Many consider it the most memorable appearance in movie lore – while he stands completely still.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, must walk the line of detention units finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, his face resembling a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move before suddenly he lunges at the barrier, producing that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that genuine criminals tend to be quite dull, with nothing resembling the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown at the time he got the part that won him an Oscar in the iconic film back in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar emerged. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own rigorously precise acting coach his instructor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a sore point for the actor, who also describes how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret concerning Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked his time away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He felt confused, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a pastry chef and a tough individual, a plain speaker who detested the religious hypocrites at the church and didn't believe in expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the way they had to go begging to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and could get the young Anthony into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. But one day during an English class he was required to perform John Masefield's poem The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, started his career. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting with the great Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time scholarships existed to go to Rada – a path to success for working-class actors. His father was always amazed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but stumbled upon a memorable TV character as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, that he favored over theater. And he quit booze during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his second Academy Award.

During the second part of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He remembers going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star from Goodfellas? Not really. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Really?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and proceed with the work. Indeed. But he also recounts facing a rude director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. An actor of his caliber surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply