🔗 Share this article

It stands as the most memorable appearance in film history – and he remains utterly motionless.

Clarice Starling, new to the job, proceeds down a row of prison cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. There he stands, his face resembling an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He stands frozen before suddenly he lunges toward the window, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since shown that genuine criminals tend to be quite dull, with nothing resembling Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly unrecognized at the time he got the part that won him an Oscar in the 1991 thriller back in 1989: it wasn't his debut, instead, a superstar was cemented. The character of Hannibal was inspired, the actor happily remembers in his recent memoir, on Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin as recalled by his daughter, and on his own strictly demanding Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. There was also a father-daughter dimension to these scenes; a painful subject for the actor, who also describes how his portrayal of Lear was unknowingly shaped by an agonised guilt concerning Abigail, the daughter he was separated from from his initial marriage in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who disliked his time away and his drinking habits.

The title originates from an historical picture of a young Hopkins on the beach with his dad – the kid who maybe thought he would never do OK. He was a bewildered, shy and fragile youth raised in Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the scene-stealing supporting player in this story: a baker and a traditional male, a straightforward talker who detested the religious hypocrites in their community and refused to showing his emotions, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. His father who furiously resented how they were forced humbly to their wealthy relations such as Aunt Patty, who was connected to the politician Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves during the car ride. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, temporarily. Anthony struggled academically at the prestigious school. Then, during during an English class he had to recite the verse by John Masefield titled The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he stunned the teacher and the other students. He says quite plausibly that verse, by itself, launched him. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, pursued acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic within 10 years. He more or less did it on his own, though at that time there were grants for drama school – a path to success for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from Hamlet, Hopkins Sr listened attentively and then went into another room and began crying.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but lucked into a memorable TV character as a potential war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which led indirectly to characters including in the film The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in movies, which he preferred to the stage. He stopped drinking in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and so survived into middle age to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the butler Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in The Father – his second Academy Award.

During the second part of his autobiography his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He remembers having lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the much-respected actor Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Hardly. Hopkins seems to go along with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Is that so?

He repeatedly performs the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it's your duty to be on time, remember every crew member's name and get on with it. Quite so. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologise to her! And learn some manners. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink but possibly not the combativeness that came with it. A Shakespearean like him is aware of the lines about Kent from Cornwall from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

He finishes his autobiography with a detailed supplement composed simply