🔗 Share this article

It stands as the most iconic appearance in film history – while he stands without moving a muscle.

The FBI trainee, a rookie, navigates a row of prison cells finally encountering the notorious doctor's transparent prison. He is positioned, with features like a skeletal visage filled with sinister intent, eerily immobile clad in a tight blue prison jumpsuit. He remains motionless before suddenly he throws himself against the glass, producing that extraordinary hissing-slavering sound. Countless documentaries on serial killers have since shown that genuine criminals are usually uninteresting, lacking anything like Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

He wasn't exactly an unknown upon receiving that Oscar-winning role in The Silence of the Lambs in 1989: it wasn't his debut, but a legend was cemented. His Dr. Lecter was inspired, Hopkins notes with amusement in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin as recalled by his daughter, as well as his rigorously precise drama teacher his mentor Fettes. There was also a parent-child dynamic in these moments; a difficult topic for the actor, who further explains how his portrayal of Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union during the 60s to Petronella Barker, who resented his time away and his drinking habits.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins playing on the sand with his father – the child who might have felt he couldn't make it. He appeared lost, shy and fragile youth hailing from Port Talbot, his father was Richard Arthur Hopkins, the standout secondary character here: a baker and a tough individual, a plain speaker who despised the religious hypocrites of the chapel and avoided showing his emotions, yet possessed a touch of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. Richard Hopkins who was angered by the way they had to go humbly to their wealthy relations including Auntie Patty, whose husband knew Nye Bevan and could get the young Anthony 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 humility worked, for a time. He was a poor student in his new institution. But one day during an English class he was required to perform John Masefield's poem The West Wind – without seeing it first – and his talent emerged; he amazed the instructor and the other boys. He reasonably claims that verse, by itself, started his career. This, and joining the dramatic society at the YMCA. Remarkably, he left school with low prospects, went into acting, and shocking his family, was performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, though at that time financial aid was available to go to Rada – a way up for working-class actors. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to deliver the Yorick lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, strong-willed son, he departed the theatrical troupe out of frustration – causing Olivier's regret and displeasure – but fortunately found a great TV role as a suspected war criminal in the series QB VII, which paved the way to parts like that in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, which he liked more compared to stage acting. He stopped drinking back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and so survived into his later years to achieve remarkable acting, such as Lecter, the servant Stevens in the movie with Emma Thompson with Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his second Academy Award.

During the second part of the memoir he appears more reserved, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage doesn't quite come off. He mentions going out for lunch by his co-star in Stone's Nixon, the highly regarded performer Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the opportunity for Hopkins to learn something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's rejection that Sorvino was acting by jealousy. Really?

He consistently acts as the grounded, serious thespian who maintains you must to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Absolutely. However, he also describes facing a rude director who caused a young extra to weep: “Say sorry to her! And learn some manners. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be a person who quit alcohol but possibly not the combativeness that accompanied it. A Shakespearean like him must know the lines about Kent from Cornwall from Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain – he is compelled to be honest!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply