🔗 Share this article

It stands as the most memorable appearance in cinematic history – while he stands utterly motionless.

The FBI trainee, new to the job, navigates a row of prison cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's transparent prison. There he stands, with features like a skeletal visage radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still wearing a snug blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless right up until he lunges toward the window, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. Numerous true-crime documentaries have since revealed that real-life murderers tend to be quite dull, with nothing resembling the actor's powerful on-screen charisma.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer at the time he got that Oscar-winning role in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar was cemented. The character of Hannibal was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in this new autobiography, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his icily exacting drama teacher Christopher Fettes. Additionally, there existed a parent-child dynamic to these scenes; a difficult topic for the actor, who recounts how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by deep-seated remorse about Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage during the 60s with Petronella Barker, who resented him being away and drinking.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler on the beach with his dad – the kid who maybe thought he couldn't make it. He was a bewildered, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character in the narrative: a baker and man's man, a straightforward talker who despised the sanctimonious churchgoers at the church and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. His father who furiously resented the necessity of going begging to their rich relatives such as Aunt Patty, whose spouse was acquainted with Nye Bevan and was able to secure 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! Absolute nonsense, that's the truth!”

The humility worked, for a while. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. Then, during in a literature class he was required to perform the poem by Masefield The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that poetry, on its own, started his career. Combined with participating in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, pursued acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was acting with Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, although in those days financial aid was available to attend Rada – an opportunity for actors from humble backgrounds. His father was always amazed by his son's international fame: on asking his son to perform the Yorick monologue from Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and burst into tears.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but fortunately found a memorable TV character playing an alleged war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, which he preferred to the stage. And he quit booze in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live into his later years to deliver outstanding roles, including Lecter, the servant Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in the movie The Father – his second Oscar.

In the later sections of the memoir his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Some of the anecdotage fall a bit flat. He remembers going out for lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who sought to advise him his portrayal of Nixon was falling short. Was this the moment for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Is that so?

He often portrays the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Quite so. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who brought a background actor to tears: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Hopkins sounds like someone who gave up drink but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him is aware of Cornwall's speech regarding Kent in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply