🔗 Share this article

It stands as the most iconic entrance in film history – while he stands utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, proceeds down the line of detention units arriving at Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, his face resembling an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, chillingly static wearing a snug prisoner's blue outfit. He remains motionless until the moment he lunges against the glass, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless true-crime documentaries have since revealed that actual serial killers are often very boring, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's powerful on-screen charisma.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer at the time he got the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: he was already established, instead, a superstar emerged. The character of Hannibal drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own strictly demanding acting coach his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a painful subject for Anthony, who also describes how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret about Abigail, the estranged daughter from his failed first union back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who disliked his absences and his alcohol use.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he would never do OK. He appeared lost, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in the narrative: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who loathed the religious hypocrites at the church and avoided displaying emotion, but had a streak of wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who furiously resented the necessity of going begging to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and was able to secure Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a time. Anthony struggled academically at the prestigious school. Then, during in a literature class he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he shocked the educator and the other boys. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, started his career. This, and joining the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated without much hope, went into acting, and shocking his family, was performing with Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days scholarships existed for drama school – a way up for working-class actors. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to recite the Yorick speech from the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but stumbled upon a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a successful acting career on screen, which he liked more to the stage. He gave up alcohol in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and managed to live into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of the memoir he appears more reserved, more calculated. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He remembers having lunch with his fellow actor in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who sought to advise him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the chance for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven by jealousy. Really?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it's your duty to arrive punctually, remember every crew member's name and do the job. Absolutely. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And develop some respect. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as an individual who stopped drinking but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply