🔗 Share this article

Widely regarded as the most memorable entrance in cinematic history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, proceeds down a corridor of cells arriving at Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, with features like a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, chillingly static clad in a tight prisoner's blue outfit. He stands frozen before suddenly he lunges against the glass, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. A multitude of true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that genuine criminals tend to be quite dull, far from the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown at the time he got his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: he was already established, but a legend was forged. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, the actor happily remembers in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and also from his rigorously precise drama teacher his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a sore point for Anthony, who further explains how his portrayal of Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union during the 60s with Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and drinking.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He felt confused, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a direct communicator who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites in their community and refused to showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who furiously resented how they were forced begging to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The humility worked, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. But one day in a literature class he had to recite the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and his talent emerged; he shocked the educator and his classmates. He convincingly states that poems, alone, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time scholarships existed for drama school – a path to success for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe of Anthony's global success: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention 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 fortunately found a memorable TV character as a suspected war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to characters including in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, that he favored compared to stage acting. And he quit booze in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived through midlife to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of his autobiography his character seems more elusive, more calculated. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He mentions having lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Truly?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who maintains you must to be on time, know all the crew's names and proceed with the work. Quite so. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! He appears to be someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply