🔗 Share this article

Widely regarded as the most memorable appearance in movie lore – while he stands utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, navigates a corridor of cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's transparent prison. He is positioned, with features like an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, chillingly static in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He stands frozen until the moment he throws himself at the barrier, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since revealed that actual serial killers tend to be quite dull, far from Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not an unknown when he landed the part that won him an Oscar in the iconic film back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, the actor happily remembers in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own strictly demanding drama teacher Christopher Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a painful subject for Hopkins, who also describes how his Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who was angered by him being away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler on the beach with his dad – 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 memorable figure in the narrative: a baker and a tough individual, a plain speaker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and refused to displaying emotion, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who furiously resented the necessity of going cap-in-hand to affluent family members including Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the politician Nye Bevan and was able to secure young Anthony into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. Then, during in an English lesson he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then financial aid was available for drama school – a way up for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career on screen, which he liked more to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the book he appears more reserved, more studied. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He recalls being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the chance for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Really?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who maintains you must to be on time, know all the crew's names and proceed with the work. Quite so. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker 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! Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking but maybe not the belligerence that accompanied it. An actor of his caliber surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a detailed supplement composed simply