🔗 Share this article

Many consider it the most memorable appearance in film history – and he remains utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, navigates the line of detention units until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's transparent prison. He is positioned, appearing as a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still in his form-fitting blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move before suddenly he propels himself toward the window, producing that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly unrecognized when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: he was already established, but a legend was forged. The character of Hannibal drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own strictly demanding acting coach his instructor Fettes. There was also a paternal-filial aspect in these moments; a sore point for the actor, who further explains how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, the estranged daughter from his failed first union in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who was angered by him being away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an historical picture of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He appeared lost, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a pastry chef and a tough individual, a direct communicator who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and refused to displaying emotion, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who was angered by the way they had to go cap-in-hand to affluent family members including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. He was a poor student at the prestigious school. Then, during in an English lesson he was required to perform the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater within 10 years. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time financial aid was available to go to Rada – a way up for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and wept openly.

Regarding the fiery, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre in a fit of pique – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but stumbled upon an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to roles such as in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he preferred over theater. And he quit booze in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward 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.

During the second part of the book his character seems more elusive, more studied. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He recalls being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight something from the legendary star of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Truly?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it is one's responsibility to get there on time, know all the crew's names and do the job. Quite so. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And develop some respect. Should you ever act that way near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that came with it. An actor of his caliber surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a detailed supplement composed simply