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Many consider it the most memorable introduction in film history – while he stands completely still.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, proceeds down a row of prison cells arriving at Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. The man is present, his face resembling a living skull exuding demonic evil, chillingly static wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move before suddenly he throws himself at the barrier, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Countless real-crime films have since shown that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not a newcomer upon receiving the part that won him an Oscar in the iconic film back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was cemented. The character of Hannibal was based, the actor happily remembers in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own rigorously precise drama teacher Christopher Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a difficult topic for the actor, who also describes how his Lear was subconsciously influenced by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a pastry chef and a tough individual, a plain speaker who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who was angered by the necessity of going begging to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The humility worked, for a time. Anthony struggled academically at his new school. Then, during in a literature class he was required to perform the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school without much hope, went into acting, and shocking his family, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then scholarships existed to go to Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but stumbled upon a memorable TV character playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, which he liked more to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and thus made it into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. A few tales fall a bit flat. He mentions being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor from Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who maintains you must to be on time, remember every crew member's name and do the job. Indeed. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. 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 but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. An actor of his caliber must know Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply