🔗 Share this article

Many consider it the most memorable appearance in movie lore – and he remains without moving a muscle.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, proceeds down a row of prison cells until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. The man is present, with features like a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile wearing a snug prisoner's blue outfit. He stands frozen before suddenly he propels himself against the glass, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous 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 unrecognized at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: he was already established, but a legend was forged. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his icily exacting drama teacher his mentor Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a sore point for Hopkins, who also describes how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse concerning Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his disastrous first marriage during the 60s to his first wife, who was angered by his absences and his alcohol use.

The title originates from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in this story: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a plain speaker who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and didn't believe in showing his emotions, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented how they were forced humbly to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. Then, during in an English lesson he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other boys. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, even though back then there were grants to go to Rada – a path to success for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, strong-willed son, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but fortunately found a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which eventually resulted to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he preferred over theater. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and thus made it through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Certain stories doesn't quite come off. He recalls having lunch with his fellow actor in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Not really. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who believes you must to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Quite so. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him must know Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A straightforward and sincere nature – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with an extensive addendum composed simply