🔗 Share this article

Widely regarded as the most memorable introduction in cinematic history – while he stands utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, navigates a corridor of cells finally encountering Hannibal Lecter's transparent prison. He is positioned, his face resembling a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless before suddenly he propels himself against the glass, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous real-crime films have since demonstrated that real-life murderers are often very boring, with nothing resembling Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly unrecognized when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in the iconic film in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar emerged. His portrayal of Lecter was inspired, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his strictly demanding drama teacher his mentor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a painful subject for Hopkins, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked his time away and drinking.

The book's name comes from an historical picture of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the kid who maybe thought he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a bread-maker and man's man, a straightforward talker who detested the religious hypocrites in their community and didn't believe in displaying emotion, but had a streak of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who deeply disliked how they were forced humbly to their wealthy relations like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the famous Bevan and helped enroll young Anthony into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims while traveling there. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The humility worked, for a while. He was a poor student at his new school. But one day in an English lesson he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, started his career. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated without much hope, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days there were grants to go to Rada – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but stumbled upon a memorable TV character as a potential war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

During the second part of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more calculated. A few tales fall a bit flat. He recalls being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in the film Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated out of envy. Really?

He often portrays the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it's your duty to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and get on with it. Absolutely. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. 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 went with it. An actor of his caliber surely knows Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply