🔗 Share this article

It stands as the most iconic entrance in cinematic history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, must walk a corridor of cells arriving at the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. There he stands, with features like a living skull filled with sinister intent, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He stands frozen until the moment he throws himself at the barrier, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless real-crime films have since shown that real-life murderers are often very boring, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer upon receiving the part that won him an Oscar in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was forged. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, as well as his rigorously precise drama teacher his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a painful subject for the actor, who also describes how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse concerning Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who was angered by him being away and drinking.

The memoir's title is derived from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and refused to showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who was angered by the necessity of going cap-in-hand to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the famous Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he exclaims during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The humility worked, for a while. He was a poor student in his new institution. Then, during in an English lesson he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he shocked the educator and the other students. He says quite plausibly that verse, by itself, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was on stage alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days there were grants to attend Rada – a way up for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, strong-willed son, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and disapproval – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to roles such as in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, that he favored over theater. He stopped drinking in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived through midlife to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He remembers going out for lunch by his co-star in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Is that so?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who believes it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Indeed. But he also recounts facing a rude director who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that came with it. A Shakespearean like him must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply