🔗 Share this article

It stands as the most memorable appearance in movie lore – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, navigates a row of prison cells until she reaches Hannibal Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, appearing as a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile wearing a snug prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move until the moment he throws himself against the glass, producing that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of true-crime documentaries have since demonstrated that genuine criminals are often very boring, with nothing resembling the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer when he landed the part that won him an Oscar in the iconic film back in 1989: he was already established, but a legend was cemented. The character of Hannibal was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader according to his daughter's memories, and also from his strictly demanding Rada tutor Christopher Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a sore point for Anthony, who recounts how his King Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret concerning Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who was angered by him being away and his alcohol use.

The title originates from a vintage war-era photograph of Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He appeared lost, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a bread-maker and a tough individual, a straightforward talker who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and didn't believe in displaying emotion, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented how they were forced humbly to their wealthy relations such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and could get the young Anthony into a posh school: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves during the car ride. “We are all expecting handouts! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. He was a poor student in his new institution. Then, during in a literature class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and the other students. He says quite plausibly that verse, by itself, launched him. This, and joining the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school without much hope, went into acting, and shocking his family, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days scholarships existed to go to Rada – a path to success for working-class actors. His father was always amazed of Anthony's global success: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, which he liked more to the stage. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and thus made it into middle age to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the later sections of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He mentions being taken out to lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for Anthony to gain insight advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated by jealousy. Really?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who maintains it's your duty to get there on time, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Absolutely. But he also recounts facing a rude director who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. You ever do that again near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply