🔗 Share this article

Many consider it the most iconic entrance in movie lore – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, navigates the line of detention units arriving at Hannibal Lecter's secure glass tank. The man is present, his face resembling a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, chillingly static wearing a snug prisoner's blue outfit. He remains motionless before suddenly he throws himself toward the window, emitting that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. A multitude of real-crime films have since revealed that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like the actor's commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer when he landed the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: he was already established, but a legend was cemented. The character of Hannibal drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, as well as his strictly demanding Rada tutor Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension within the narrative; a sore point for Hopkins, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union during the 60s to his first wife, who was angered by his time away and drinking.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a plain speaker who detested the Bible-punching hypocrites in their community and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented how they were forced cap-in-hand to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll the young Anthony into a posh school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. But one day in a literature class he had to recite John Masefield's poem The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, went into acting, and shocking his family, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic within 10 years. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time there were grants for drama school – a path to success for performers from modest means. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role as a potential war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey on screen, that he favored over theater. He gave up alcohol during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more deliberate. Certain stories fall a bit flat. He recalls having lunch alongside his cast mate in the film Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks it is one's responsibility to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set 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 acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol yet perhaps not the aggression that accompanied it. An actor of his caliber is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply