🔗 Share this article

Many consider it the most memorable introduction in film history – yet the actor stays completely still.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, navigates the line of detention units until she reaches the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, appearing as a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move until the moment he propels himself at the barrier, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since revealed that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

He was not unrecognized upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: a star wasn't born, but a legend was cemented. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, the actor happily remembers in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader according to his daughter's memories, as well as his rigorously precise acting coach his mentor Fettes. There was also a paternal-filial aspect in these moments; a sore point for the actor, who recounts how his Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented him being away and drinking.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a bread-maker and man's man, a direct communicator who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites in their community and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who was angered by the way they had to go humbly to their rich relatives like Auntie Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. Then, during in an English lesson he had to recite the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated without much hope, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was acting with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater within 10 years. He largely achieved it alone, even though back then there were grants to go to Rada – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but stumbled upon a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, which he liked more over theater. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in The Father – his second Academy Award.

During the second part of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. Certain stories fall a bit flat. He remembers going out for lunch by his co-star in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor from Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven by jealousy. Is that so?

He often portrays the grounded, serious thespian who believes it's your duty to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Indeed. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink yet perhaps not the aggression that came with it. A Shakespearean like him must know Cornwall's lines on Kent in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply