🔗 Share this article

Widely regarded as the most iconic entrance in cinematic history – while he stands utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, proceeds down a row of prison cells arriving at Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. He is positioned, with features like a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless right up until he throws himself against the glass, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless true-crime documentaries have since shown that actual serial killers are often very boring, with nothing resembling the actor's captivating film persona.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs during the late 80s: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, the actor happily remembers in this new autobiography, from Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own rigorously precise Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a difficult topic for Hopkins, who recounts how his King Lear was indirectly affected by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who disliked his time away and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins on the beach with his dad – the kid who maybe thought he would never do OK. He appeared lost, shy and fragile youth from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a pastry chef and man's man, a plain speaker who despised the religious hypocrites in their community and refused to displaying emotion, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who was angered by the way they had to go cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and helped enroll the young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims while traveling there. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The humility worked, for a time. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. Then, during in a literature class he was required to perform John Masefield's poem titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other boys. He convincingly states that poems, alone, launched him. This, and joining the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, entered the acting world, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, even though back then there were grants to go to Rada – an opportunity for actors from humble backgrounds. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then left the room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but stumbled upon an excellent television part playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he preferred over theater. He stopped drinking back in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into middle age to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the steward Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He remembers going out for lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the moment for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism that Sorvino was acting out of envy. Really?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who maintains you must to be on time, remember every crew member's name and do the job. Absolutely. Yet he also tells standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker 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! Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink yet perhaps not the aggression that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply