🔗 Share this article

Widely regarded as the most iconic introduction in film history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, just starting out, proceeds down a row of prison cells until she reaches Dr. Lecter's transparent prison. The man is present, his face resembling an animated death's head filled with sinister intent, chillingly static wearing a snug blue prison jumpsuit. He stands frozen right up until he propels himself toward the window, making that unforgettable spitting-growling noise. A multitude of real-crime films have since revealed that genuine criminals tend to be quite dull, with nothing resembling Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in the iconic film during the late 80s: a star wasn't born, instead, a superstar was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in this new autobiography, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his icily exacting Rada tutor Christopher Fettes. The scenes also contained a paternal-filial aspect within the narrative; a painful subject for Anthony, who further explains how his King Lear was indirectly affected by deep-seated remorse regarding his daughter Abigail, the estranged daughter from his failed first union in 1966 to his first wife, who disliked his absences and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Anthony as a small child playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He was a bewildered, lonely, vulnerable little boy from Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the memorable figure in the narrative: a baker and man's man, a straightforward talker who loathed the sanctimonious churchgoers in their community and didn't believe in displaying emotion, but also exhibited dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who furiously resented how they were forced humbly to their rich relatives including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and could get Anthony as a boy into a posh school: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” 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. Hopkins was a hopeless student in his new institution. However, one day during an English class he had to recite the poem by Masefield known as The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his voice awakened; he amazed the instructor and his classmates. He says quite plausibly that verse, by itself, launched him. Combined with participating in the YMCA theater group. Notably, he graduated without much hope, went into acting, and amazingly to his parents, was performing with the great Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time scholarships existed to go to Rada – an opportunity for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed of Anthony's global success: upon requesting his son to perform the Yorick monologue from the play Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then retreated to another room and began crying.

Concerning the volatile, bloody-minded son, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – to Olivier's profound dismay and disapproval – but lucked into an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in Leon Uris's QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a luminous film journey in movies, which he liked more over theater. And he quit booze in 1975 once a notorious drinker, and thus made it into middle age to execute great performances, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in the movie The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of the book his personality becomes more opaque, more deliberate. A few tales doesn't quite come off. He mentions being taken out to lunch alongside his cast mate in the film Nixon, the highly regarded performer Paul Sorvino, who intended to inform him his acting as Nixon wasn't working. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn a lesson from the famous actor of Scorsese's Goodfellas? Not really. Anthony appears to agree with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting due to resentment. Is that so?

He often portrays the no-nonsense, practical performer who believes you must to arrive punctually, know all the crew's names and do the job. Absolutely. Yet he also tells confronting an obnoxious director who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. You ever do that again near me, I'll alter your appearance!” He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him is aware of Cornwall's speech regarding Kent from Lear: “He is incapable of flattery! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply