🔗 Share this article

It stands as the most memorable entrance in film history – yet the actor stays completely still.

A young FBI agent, a rookie, navigates the line of detention units finally encountering the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, his face resembling a living skull exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move before suddenly he throws himself at the barrier, producing that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like Hopkins' captivating film persona.

He was not an unknown upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: a star wasn't born, but rather a megastar emerged. The character of Hannibal was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and also from his strictly demanding Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a painful subject for the actor, who further explains how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who resented his absences and his drinking habits.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the kid who maybe thought he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a straightforward talker who detested the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and avoided showing his emotions, but had a streak of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked how they were forced cap-in-hand to their rich relatives such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. He was a poor student at his new school. Then, during in an English lesson he had to recite John Masefield's poem The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. This, and joining the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater within 10 years. He more or less did it on his own, even though back then scholarships existed to go to Rada – a way up for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – causing Olivier's regret and criticism – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, which he preferred compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the memoir his character seems more elusive, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He recalls going out for lunch with his fellow actor in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Sorvino, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated out of envy. Really?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks you must to be on time, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Indeed. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but maybe not the belligerence that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply