🔗 Share this article

It stands as the most memorable entrance in movie lore – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, proceeds down a corridor of cells until she reaches the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, his face resembling a skeletal visage exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile wearing a snug prisoner's blue outfit. He remains motionless until the moment he throws himself against the glass, producing that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. A multitude of true-crime documentaries have since shown that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like the actor's captivating film persona.

He was not a newcomer at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar was forged. The character of Hannibal was based, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his rigorously precise drama teacher Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a paternal-filial aspect within the narrative; a painful subject for Hopkins, who also describes how his portrayal of Lear was subconsciously influenced by painful regret about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage during the 60s with Petronella Barker, who was angered by his time away and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from a vintage war-era photograph of a young Hopkins with his father at the seaside – the kid who maybe thought 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 pastry chef and man's man, a plain speaker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and didn't believe in expressing his feelings, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who deeply disliked the necessity of going humbly to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with Nye Bevan and was able to secure young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he shouts during the car ride. “We are all expecting handouts! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. He was a poor student at his new school. However, one day in a literature class he had to recite John Masefield's poem The West Wind – without seeing it first – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He convincingly states that poetry, on its own, started his career. Combined with participating in the YMCA drama club. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time financial aid was available for drama school – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe by his son's international fame: upon requesting his son to deliver the Yorick lines from Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then went into another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but fortunately found a memorable TV character as a potential war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to characters including in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he liked more over theater. He gave up alcohol in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and managed to live into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in The Father – his second Oscar.

In the latter half of the memoir he appears more reserved, more studied. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He remembers having lunch alongside his cast mate in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't working. Was this the moment for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Truly?

He often portrays the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it's your duty to be on time, know all the crew's names and get on with it. Absolutely. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And learn some manners. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that accompanied it. A classical performer like Hopkins must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a lengthy appendix composed simply