🔗 Share this article

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

The FBI trainee, just starting out, must walk a corridor of cells until she reaches Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. There he stands, appearing as a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move until the moment he propels himself against the glass, emitting that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

He was not a newcomer at the time he got the part that won him an Oscar in the iconic film back in 1989: a star wasn't born, but rather a megastar was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin according to his daughter's memories, as well as his strictly demanding drama teacher Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a sore point for Anthony, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union back in 1966 to his first wife, who resented his time away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins with his father at the seaside – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a baker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites of the chapel and didn't believe in displaying emotion, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who was angered by the way they had to go humbly to their rich relatives like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the politician Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims while traveling there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. But one day in a literature class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he amazed the instructor and the other students. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, propelled him forward. This, and joining the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated without much hope, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the famous theater within 10 years. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time scholarships existed for drama school – a way up for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then retreated to another room and burst into tears.

As for the hot-tempered, strong-willed son, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but stumbled upon a great TV role as a potential war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which eventually resulted to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, that he favored compared to stage acting. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live into middle age to execute great performances, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He mentions being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star from Goodfellas? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it is one's responsibility to be on time, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Quite so. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And develop some respect. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that accompanied it. A classical performer like Hopkins must know Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply