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Many consider it the greatest appearance in cinematic history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, proceeds down a corridor of cells until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, with features like a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move until the moment he propels himself toward the window, making that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless true-crime documentaries have since shown that genuine criminals are often very boring, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer 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. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own rigorously precise acting coach his instructor Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a sore point for Hopkins, who also describes how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who was angered by his absences and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a direct communicator who despised the religious hypocrites of the chapel and didn't believe in showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the necessity of going begging to their rich relatives such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into a posh school: “Due to their immense riches!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The humility worked, for a time. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. Then, during during an English class he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He convincingly states that poems, alone, propelled him forward. This, and joining the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic within 10 years. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days financial aid was available to go to Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company out of frustration – causing Olivier's regret and disapproval – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and thus made it into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of the memoir his character seems more elusive, more studied. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He remembers being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor from Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Really?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who believes it is one's responsibility to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Indeed. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply