🔗 Share this article

It stands as the greatest appearance in film history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, a rookie, must walk a row of prison cells until she reaches the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. He is positioned, appearing as an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He stands frozen until the moment he throws himself against the glass, producing that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly unrecognized upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film during the late 80s: he was already established, instead, a superstar was cemented. His Dr. Lecter drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his icily exacting Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. The scenes also contained a paternal-filial aspect in these moments; a sore point for the actor, who further explains how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage back in 1966 to his first wife, who was angered by his time away and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He appeared lost, isolated and sensitive child from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in this story: a baker and man's man, a straightforward talker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who was angered by the way they had to go humbly to their rich relatives such as Aunt Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the famous Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims during the car ride. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. However, one day in a literature class he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, started his career. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school without much hope, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was on stage with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater within 10 years. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time financial aid was available to attend Rada – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but stumbled upon an excellent television part playing an alleged war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, that he favored over theater. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and so survived through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of his autobiography his character seems more elusive, more calculated. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He recalls having lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the moment for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven by jealousy. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it's your duty to be on time, learn everyone's name on set 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 learn some manners. 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 came with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply