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Many consider it the greatest appearance in film history – while he stands without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, proceeds down a corridor of cells finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, with features like a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move until the moment he lunges against the glass, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are often very boring, far from Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly an unknown when he landed that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs during the late 80s: a star wasn't born, but rather a megastar was forged. The character of Hannibal drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own strictly demanding Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a painful subject for Anthony, who further explains how his King Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse about Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who resented him being away and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in this story: a pastry chef and man's man, a plain speaker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who was angered by the necessity of going cap-in-hand to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and was able to secure young Anthony into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves while traveling there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. He was a poor student at the prestigious school. But one day in a literature class he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other students. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, launched him. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated without much hope, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic within 10 years. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time financial aid was available to go to Rada – a path to success for performers from modest means. His father was always amazed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and criticism – but fortunately found a great TV role as a potential 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 luminous film journey in cinema, which he preferred over theater. And he quit booze in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and so survived into middle age to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler 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.

In the latter half of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He remembers going out for lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the moment for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated out of envy. Truly?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who maintains it is one's responsibility to be on time, remember every crew member's name and proceed with the work. Indeed. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. An actor of his caliber surely knows Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with an extensive addendum composed simply