🔗 Share this article

It stands as the greatest introduction in cinematic history – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

Clarice Starling, just starting out, navigates a row of prison cells arriving at the notorious doctor's transparent prison. He is positioned, with features like an animated death's head exuding demonic evil, unnervingly still in his form-fitting prisoner's blue outfit. He doesn't move right up until he throws himself at the barrier, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. A multitude of true-crime documentaries have since shown that actual serial killers are often very boring, far from Hopkins' captivating film persona.

He wasn't exactly an unknown upon receiving his Academy Award-winning part in the 1991 thriller in 1989: he was already established, but rather a megastar was cemented. The character of Hannibal was inspired, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his latest book, from Lugosi's Dracula, on Joseph Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, and also from his strictly demanding acting coach his mentor Fettes. The scenes also contained a parent-child dynamic within the narrative; a difficult topic for Anthony, who recounts how his King Lear was subconsciously influenced by an agonised guilt about Abigail, his distant daughter from his disastrous first marriage in 1966 to his first wife, who resented his time away and his alcohol use.

The book's name comes from an old wartime photo of Hopkins as a toddler with his father at the seaside – the child who might have felt he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child raised in Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the memorable figure in the narrative: a bread-maker and a traditional male, a direct communicator who despised the religious hypocrites at the church and didn't believe in expressing his feelings, but also exhibited wistful, tearful romanticism. It was Hopkins Sr who was angered by the way they had to go humbly to affluent family members like Auntie Patty, who was connected to the famous Bevan and helped enroll the young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Due to their immense riches!” he raves in the car on the way there. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The pleading was effective, temporarily. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. Then, during in an English lesson he needed to deliver 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 reasonably claims that verse, by itself, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the dramatic society at the YMCA. Notably, he graduated with low prospects, went into acting, and to the astonishment of his parents, was on stage with the great Olivier at the Old Vic in under a decade. He largely achieved it alone, although in those days scholarships existed to attend Rada – an opportunity for performers from modest means. Richard Hopkins was continually impressed by his son's international fame: when he asked Anthony to recite the Yorick speech from the play Hamlet, his father paid close attention and then went into another room and wept openly.

Regarding the fiery, stubborn individual, he quit the National Theatre company in a moment of anger – causing Olivier's regret and disapproval – but fortunately found an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which eventually resulted to characters including in the film The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, which he preferred to the stage. He gave up alcohol back in 1975 after being a heavy drinker, and managed to live through midlife to deliver outstanding roles, such as 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 latter half of the memoir he appears more reserved, more calculated. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He recalls having lunch alongside his cast mate in the film Nixon, the esteemed thespian Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his acting as Nixon wasn't effective. Was this the chance for Hopkins to learn advice from the renowned performer of the Goodfellas fame? Hardly. He tends to concur with Stone's dismissal of Sorvino as driven by jealousy. Truly?

He often portrays the grounded, serious thespian who thinks it is one's responsibility to arrive punctually, learn everyone's name on set and do the job. Indeed. But he also recounts confronting an obnoxious director who'd made a young extra cry: “Apologize to that girl! And develop some respect. You ever do that again around me, I'll rearrange your face! He appears to be an individual who stopped drinking yet perhaps not the aggression that came with it. An actor of his caliber surely knows the lines about Kent from Cornwall in King Lear: “He does not know how to flatter! An honest mind and plain – he must speak truth!”

Hopkins concludes his book with a lengthy appendix composed simply