🔗 Share this article

It stands as the most memorable appearance in cinematic history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, just starting out, proceeds down a corridor of cells until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, with features like a living skull filled with sinister intent, chillingly static wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He doesn't move right up until he propels himself against the glass, emitting that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous real-crime films have since shown that actual serial killers are often very boring, far from the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer when he landed the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but rather a megastar emerged. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on the Soviet leader according to his daughter's memories, and on his own icily exacting drama teacher his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a difficult topic for the actor, who further explains how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who disliked his time away and drinking.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He felt confused, lonely, vulnerable little boy hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a pastry chef and a tough individual, a plain speaker who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and avoided expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. His father who was angered by how they were forced begging to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and helped enroll young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. Then, during in a literature class he was required to perform the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – sight unseen – and his talent emerged; he amazed the instructor and the other boys. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, launched him. This, and joining the YMCA drama club. Surprisingly, he exited school without much hope, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic within 10 years. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time financial aid was available for drama school – a way up for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to perform the Yorick monologue from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Regarding the fiery, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company out of frustration – much to Olivier's disappointment and disapproval – but lucked into a great TV role as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he preferred over theater. And he quit booze during the mid-70s having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He remembers going out for lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul, who wanted to tell him his performance as Nixon was falling short. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the no-nonsense, practical performer who thinks you must to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and do the job. Indeed. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. You ever do that again near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that accompanied it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply