🔗 Share this article

Widely regarded as the most iconic appearance in movie lore – while he stands utterly motionless.

A young FBI agent, a rookie, must walk the line of detention units arriving at the notorious doctor's transparent prison. The man is present, with features like a living skull exuding demonic evil, chillingly static clad in a tight blue inmate uniform. He doesn't move before suddenly he throws himself at the barrier, emitting that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of documentaries on serial killers have since revealed that genuine criminals tend to be quite dull, lacking anything like Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer when he landed that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs back in 1989: he was already established, instead, a superstar was cemented. The character of Hannibal was based, Hopkins notes with amusement in his latest book, on the classic Dracula, on the Soviet leader based on his daughter's accounts, and on his own icily exacting acting coach his instructor Fettes. Additionally, there existed a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a difficult topic for the actor, who further explains how his Lear was indirectly affected by an agonised guilt about Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to his first wife, who disliked his time away and drinking.

The memoir's title is derived from an historical picture of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child hailing from Port Talbot, son of Richard Arthur Hopkins, the memorable figure in the narrative: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who loathed the religious hypocrites in their community and refused to expressing his feelings, but also exhibited nostalgic, emotional sentimentality. Richard Hopkins who was angered by how they were forced begging to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a prestigious academy: “Because they're bloody rich!” he exclaims during the car ride. “We're all hoping for some pickings! Total garbage, that's all it is!”

The pleading was effective, for a time. Hopkins was a hopeless student at his new school. Then, during in an English lesson he had to recite the verse by John Masefield known as The West Wind – without prior preparation – and that voice came to life; he shocked the educator and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that poems, alone, propelled him forward. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Surprisingly, he exited school with low prospects, entered the acting world, and shocking his family, was acting with Laurence Olivier at the renowned Old Vic in just ten years. He accomplished it mostly independently, though at that time there were grants to go to Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. His dad remained in awe with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: on asking his son to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then left the room and wept openly.

As for the hot-tempered, bloody-minded son, he left the National Theatre in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and criticism – but lucked into an excellent television part as a potential war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in David Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in cinema, which he preferred compared to stage acting. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live into his later years to execute great performances, like Hannibal Lecter, the steward Stevens in The Remains of the Day featuring Emma Thompson and the elderly man with dementia in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

During the second part of the memoir he appears more reserved, more deliberate. A few tales aren't entirely successful. He remembers going out for lunch with his fellow actor in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for Anthony to gain insight advice from the renowned performer from Goodfellas? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Truly?

He consistently acts as the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who thinks it's your duty to be on time, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Quite so. But he also recounts standing up to an unpleasant filmmaker who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And acquire some decency. Should you ever act that way near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as an individual who stopped drinking but possibly not the combativeness that went with it. A Shakespearean like him must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall from the play Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Hopkins concludes his book with an extensive addendum composed simply