🔗 Share this article

Many consider it the most memorable appearance in movie lore – while he stands utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, navigates a corridor of cells until she reaches the notorious doctor's transparent prison. The man is present, his face resembling a living skull radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move right up until he propels himself against the glass, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous documentaries on serial killers have since shown that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, far from Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

He was not a newcomer upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the iconic film back in 1989: a star wasn't born, but rather a megastar was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his strictly demanding drama teacher his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a painful subject for Hopkins, who further explains how his Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who resented him being away and drinking.

The memoir's title is derived from an historical picture of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a baker and a tough individual, a direct communicator who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and didn't believe in displaying emotion, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked the way they had to go cap-in-hand to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into a posh school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. He was a poor student in his new institution. Then, during in a literature class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, started his career. This, and joining the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic within 10 years. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time there were grants for drama school – a path to success for working-class actors. His father was always amazed of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and disapproval – but lucked into a memorable TV character as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he preferred over theater. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more deliberate. Certain stories aren't entirely successful. He mentions being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in the film Nixon, the much-respected actor Sorvino, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the chance for Anthony to gain insight a lesson from the famous actor of the Goodfellas fame? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Is that so?

He often portrays the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it is one's responsibility to get there on time, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Indeed. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins must know Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with an extensive addendum composed simply