🔗 Share this article

It stands as the greatest appearance in movie lore – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, just starting out, must walk a row of prison cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, with features like a living skull radiating satanic malice, eerily immobile in his form-fitting blue inmate uniform. He remains motionless until the moment he throws himself at the barrier, producing that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. Countless true-crime documentaries have since shown that actual serial killers are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Anthony Hopkins's captivating film persona.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer 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 forged. The character of Hannibal was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin according to his daughter's memories, and also from his rigorously precise Rada tutor his mentor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a difficult topic for the actor, who also describes how his portrayal of Lear was subconsciously influenced by deep-seated remorse concerning Abigail, the estranged daughter from his disastrous first marriage back in 1966 with Petronella Barker, who resented his absences and his alcohol use.

The memoir's title is derived from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He felt confused, lonely, vulnerable little boy raised in Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in the narrative: a baker and man's man, a direct communicator who detested the sanctimonious churchgoers of the chapel and avoided showing his emotions, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who was angered by how they were forced begging to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and helped enroll Anthony as a boy into an elite school: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims while traveling there. “Everyone is looking for scraps! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a while. Anthony struggled academically in his new institution. But one day in an English lesson he had to recite the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that verse, by itself, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school a no-hoper, pursued acting, and shocking his family, was acting with the great Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days there were grants to go to Rada – a path to success for performers from modest means. His father was always amazed of Anthony's global success: upon requesting his son to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but lucked into an excellent television part playing an alleged war criminal in the series QB VII, which led indirectly to roles such as in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career in cinema, which he liked more compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and managed to live through midlife to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the servant Stevens in the film 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 book his personality becomes more opaque, more studied. A few tales fall a bit flat. He mentions being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon was falling short. Was this the chance for him to absorb advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Not really. Hopkins seems to go along with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven out of envy. Is that so?

He often portrays the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains it is one's responsibility to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Indeed. Yet he also tells facing a rude director who caused a young extra to weep: “Apologize to that girl! And acquire some decency. If you ever repeat that around me, I'll rearrange your face! Hopkins sounds like a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A classical performer like Hopkins is aware of Cornwall's lines on Kent from the play Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A truthful and simple spirit – he must speak truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with an extensive addendum composed simply