🔗 Share this article

Widely regarded as the most iconic introduction in film history – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, proceeds down a row of prison cells until she reaches the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. There he stands, his face resembling a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, chillingly static clad in a tight prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move until the moment he throws himself against the glass, producing that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Countless real-crime films have since shown that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling Anthony Hopkins's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly an unknown upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller during the late 80s: it wasn't his debut, but a legend emerged. The character of Hannibal was inspired, the actor happily remembers in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own rigorously precise acting coach his mentor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a sore point for Anthony, who also describes how his King Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt about Abigail, the estranged daughter from his initial marriage in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who was angered by his time away and drinking.

The book's name comes from a vintage war-era photograph of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player here: a bread-maker and man's man, a direct communicator who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and refused to displaying emotion, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented the way they had to go begging to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and was able to secure young Anthony into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he shouts in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. He was a poor student in his new institution. Then, during in an English lesson he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he shocked the educator and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, started his career. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, even though back then there were grants for drama school – a path to success for actors from humble backgrounds. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: upon requesting his son to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre out of frustration – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but lucked into an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze back in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into middle age to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

During the second part of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more calculated. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He mentions having lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his performance as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb something from the legendary star from Goodfellas? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as being motivated due to resentment. Really?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who believes you must to get there on time, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Indeed. However, he also describes facing a rude director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A classical performer like Hopkins surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A straightforward and sincere nature – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply