🔗 Share this article

Widely regarded as the most memorable appearance in film history – and he remains without moving a muscle.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, proceeds down a row of prison cells arriving at Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. There he stands, appearing as a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, chillingly static wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless before suddenly he propels himself against the glass, producing that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous real-crime films have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: a star wasn't born, but a legend emerged. The character of Hannibal was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, as well as his icily exacting acting coach Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a difficult topic for the actor, who also describes how his portrayal of Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his failed first union during the 60s to his first wife, who disliked him being away and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He appeared lost, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who loathed the religious hypocrites at the church and refused to expressing his feelings, but also exhibited nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. His father who was angered by the way they had to go begging to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The humility worked, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. Then, during in an English lesson he was required to perform John Masefield's poem known as The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He reasonably claims that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. This, and joining the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with the great Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time there were grants to go to Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career on screen, which he liked more to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He mentions being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who intended to inform him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Not really. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Really?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who believes you must to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Quite so. Yet he also tells 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 but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply