🔗 Share this article

Many consider it the most iconic entrance in cinematic history – and he remains without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, proceeds down the line of detention units until she reaches Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. The man is present, his face resembling an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move until the moment he lunges at the barrier, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since revealed that actual serial killers are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling the actor's commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer at the time he got the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: he was already established, instead, a superstar was forged. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and also from his strictly demanding acting coach his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a painful subject for Hopkins, who further explains how his Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his failed first union in 1966 to his first wife, who was angered by his time away and his drinking habits.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a baker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and didn't believe in displaying emotion, yet possessed a touch of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who deeply disliked the way they had to go cap-in-hand to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. Then, during during an English class he had to recite John Masefield's poem The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other students. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, started his career. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school without much hope, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, even though back then there were grants to attend Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – causing Olivier's regret and criticism – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which led indirectly to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, that he favored compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking back in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Oscar.

During the second part of his autobiography his character seems more elusive, more studied. Certain stories doesn't quite come off. He mentions having lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with the director's criticism of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Really?

He often portrays the grounded, serious thespian who maintains it's your duty to be on time, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Quite so. However, he also describes confronting an obnoxious director who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. You ever do that again in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Hopkins sounds like a person who quit alcohol but maybe not the belligerence that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him must know Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply