🔗 Share this article

It stands as the greatest entrance in cinematic history – while he stands completely still.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, proceeds down a corridor of cells finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, appearing as an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless until the moment he throws himself at the barrier, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like the actor's captivating film persona.

He was not unrecognized at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in the iconic film in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but rather a megastar emerged. His portrayal of Lecter was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and also from his rigorously precise Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. There was also a paternal-filial aspect in these moments; a sore point for Anthony, who further explains how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret concerning Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage during the 60s to his first wife, who resented his absences and drinking.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He appeared lost, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a baker and man's man, a plain speaker who despised the religious hypocrites of the chapel and avoided displaying emotion, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked how they were forced cap-in-hand to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. But one day during an English class he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, entered the acting world, and shocking his family, was performing with the great Olivier at the famous theater within 10 years. He more or less did it on his own, even though back then scholarships existed for drama school – a way up for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: on asking his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and burst into tears.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company out of frustration – causing Olivier's regret and disapproval – but lucked into a great TV role as a potential war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, which he liked more over theater. And he quit booze in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and thus made it through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the butler Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson featuring Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. Certain stories aren't entirely successful. He remembers going out for lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who sought to advise him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as driven by jealousy. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Absolutely. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director 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! Hopkins sounds like a person who quit alcohol yet perhaps not the aggression that came with it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from the play Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply