🔗 Share this article

Widely regarded as the greatest entrance in movie lore – yet the actor stays utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, a rookie, proceeds down the line of detention units finally encountering Dr. Lecter's secure glass tank. There he stands, appearing as an animated death's head radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He stands frozen right up until he propels himself against the glass, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of documentaries on serial killers have since demonstrated that actual serial killers are often very boring, with nothing resembling the actor's commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly unrecognized at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but rather a megastar was forged. The character of Hannibal drew influence, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his icily exacting Rada tutor his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a painful subject for Anthony, who recounts how his portrayal of Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his failed first union during the 60s to his first wife, who was angered by his absences and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler on the beach with his dad – the child who might have felt he would never do OK. He appeared lost, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a pastry chef and a tough individual, a direct communicator who detested the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and didn't believe in expressing his feelings, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who deeply disliked the way they had to go begging to affluent family members including Auntie Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with the famous Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he shouts during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. Then, during in a literature class he needed to deliver the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without prior preparation – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and the other boys. He convincingly states that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. This, and joining the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated a no-hoper, went into acting, and shocking his family, was acting alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater within 10 years. He accomplished it mostly independently, even though back then 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 the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then retreated to another room and burst into tears.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to parts like that in the film The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey on screen, which he liked more over theater. And he quit booze back in 1975 having been a hell-raising alcoholic, and thus made it into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson featuring Emma Thompson and the senior with memory loss in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of his autobiography his character seems more elusive, more calculated. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He remembers having lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the chance for him to absorb a lesson from the famous actor of the Goodfellas fame? Not really. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Truly?

He repeatedly performs the grounded, serious thespian who thinks you must to be on time, know all the crew's names and do the job. Indeed. But he also recounts confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. An actor of his caliber surely knows Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

He finishes his autobiography with an extensive addendum composed simply