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Many consider it the greatest entrance in film history – while he stands completely still.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, must walk a corridor of cells until she reaches the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. The man is present, his face resembling a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move right up until he lunges at the barrier, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless true-crime documentaries have since shown that real-life murderers are often very boring, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

He was not a newcomer upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar was cemented. The character of Hannibal drew influence, the actor happily remembers in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and on his own rigorously precise acting coach Christopher Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a difficult topic for the actor, who further explains how his Lear was subconsciously influenced by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his failed first union during the 60s to his first wife, who disliked him being away and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child 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 from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the memorable figure here: a bread-maker and man's man, a direct communicator who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and didn't believe in expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the way they had to go cap-in-hand to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves while traveling there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. Then, during in a literature class he was required to perform John Masefield's poem The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in just ten years. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time there were grants for drama school – a way up for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: upon requesting his son to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and began crying.

Regarding the fiery, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – much to Olivier's disappointment and criticism – but stumbled upon a memorable TV character playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career on screen, that he favored compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Certain stories fall a bit flat. He mentions being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for him to absorb something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Not really. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Really?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who maintains it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and do the job. Absolutely. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A straightforward and sincere nature – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply