🔗 Share this article

Many consider it the most memorable entrance in cinematic history – and he remains completely still.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, navigates a row of prison cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's secure glass tank. The man is present, with features like a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move before suddenly he throws himself toward the window, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Numerous real-crime films have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are often very boring, lacking anything like the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not unrecognized at the time he got the part that won him an Oscar in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was forged. The character of Hannibal drew influence, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, as well as his icily exacting drama teacher his instructor Fettes. There was also a paternal-filial aspect within the narrative; a sore point for Hopkins, who also describes how his Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse about Abigail, his distant daughter from his initial marriage in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked his absences and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from an historical picture of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He felt confused, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a bread-maker and man's man, a plain speaker who detested the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and didn't believe in expressing his feelings, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who deeply disliked the necessity of going humbly to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the famous Bevan and helped enroll young Anthony into an elite school: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. However, one day in an English lesson he needed to deliver John Masefield's poem The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he shocked the educator and the other students. He convincingly states that poems, alone, launched him. This, and joining the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated without much hope, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was performing with the great Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days scholarships existed to attend Rada – a path to success for performers from modest means. His father was always amazed of Anthony's global success: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a fit of pique – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but fortunately found a great TV role playing an alleged war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to characters including in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, which he liked more over theater. He stopped drinking during the mid-70s after being a heavy drinker, and so survived into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, like Hannibal Lecter, the butler Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the book his character seems more elusive, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He mentions being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for Anthony to gain insight a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Is that so?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who maintains it is one's responsibility to be on time, know all the crew's names 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. Should you ever act that way in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall from the play Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a detailed supplement composed simply