🔗 Share this article

Widely regarded as the most iconic appearance in movie lore – and he remains completely still.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, proceeds down the line of detention units arriving at Hannibal Lecter's transparent prison. There he stands, appearing as a living skull exuding demonic evil, chillingly static wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He stands frozen right up until he propels himself against the glass, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since shown that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Hopkins' powerful on-screen charisma.

He was not unrecognized at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar was cemented. His portrayal of Lecter was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his icily exacting drama teacher Christopher Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a sore point for Hopkins, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was subconsciously influenced by painful regret concerning Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to his first wife, who resented his time away and his drinking habits.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He appeared lost, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a baker and man's man, a straightforward talker who despised the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and didn't believe in displaying emotion, yet possessed a touch of nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. It was Hopkins Sr who was angered by the necessity of going cap-in-hand to affluent family members such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to Nye Bevan and was able to secure the young Anthony into an elite school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he exclaims in the car on the way there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. However, one day during an English class he was required to perform the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his talent emerged; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, went into 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 there were grants for drama school – an opportunity for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: on asking 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 – to Olivier's profound dismay and criticism – but lucked into an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived into his later years to execute great performances, including Lecter, the steward Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.

In the latter half of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He mentions being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor from Goodfellas? Not exactly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it is one's responsibility to be 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'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. If you ever repeat that in front of me, I'll change the shape of your face! Anthony comes across as a person who quit alcohol but maybe not the belligerence that came with it. A Shakespearean like him must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply