🔗 Share this article

Widely regarded as the most iconic entrance in cinematic history – while he stands without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, must walk a row of prison cells finally encountering Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. There he stands, with features like an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile clad in a tight prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move until the moment he propels himself against the glass, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since revealed that actual serial killers are often very boring, lacking anything like the actor's captivating film persona.

Hopkins was hardly unrecognized when he landed his Academy Award-winning part in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend emerged. His portrayal of Lecter drew influence, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his rigorously precise drama teacher Christopher Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension in these moments; a difficult topic for the actor, who further explains how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt about Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage during the 60s with Petronella Barker, who resented him being away and his drinking habits.

The title originates from an historical picture of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the boy who perhaps believed he wouldn't succeed. He appeared lost, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a plain speaker who detested the religious hypocrites at the church and refused to showing his emotions, but had a streak of wistful, tearful romanticism. It was Hopkins Sr who was angered by the necessity of going cap-in-hand to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and was able to secure young Anthony into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. Then, during during an English class he needed to deliver the poem by Masefield The West Wind – sight unseen – and his voice awakened; he stunned the teacher and his classmates. He reasonably claims that poetry, on its own, started his career. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Remarkably, he left school a no-hoper, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time financial aid was available to go to Rada – an opportunity for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, stubborn individual, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and displeasure – but lucked into a great TV role as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, which he liked more compared to stage acting. And he quit booze during the mid-70s after being a heavy drinker, and thus made it through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in the film The Remains of the Day alongside 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 calculated. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He remembers having lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Sorvino, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Not really. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Really?

He often portrays the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it's your duty to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Indeed. However, he also describes standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be someone who gave up drink but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. An actor of his caliber is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply