🔗 Share this article

Many consider it the greatest appearance in movie lore – yet the actor stays without moving a muscle.

A young FBI agent, new to the job, must walk the line of detention units arriving at Dr. Lecter's reinforced glass enclosure. The man is present, with features like a living skull radiating satanic malice, unnervingly still in his form-fitting blue prison jumpsuit. He stands frozen right up until he lunges against the glass, making that distinctive snarling-hissing noise. A multitude of real-crime films have since demonstrated that real-life murderers are usually uninteresting, with nothing resembling Hopkins' commanding screen presence.

Hopkins was hardly a newcomer at the time he got 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 based, Hopkins cheerfully recalls in his recent memoir, on the classic Dracula, on Stalin based on his daughter's accounts, as well as his icily exacting drama teacher his instructor Fettes. The scenes also contained a paternal-filial aspect to these scenes; a sore point for the actor, who recounts how his Lear was unknowingly shaped by painful regret regarding his daughter Abigail, his distant daughter from his failed first union back in 1966 to Petronella Barker, who was angered by his absences and drinking.

The title originates from an old wartime photo of a young Hopkins with his father at the seaside – the boy who perhaps believed he wouldn't succeed. He felt confused, isolated and sensitive child raised in Port Talbot, the child of Richard Hopkins, the standout secondary character in this story: a pastry chef and a traditional male, a plain speaker who loathed the Bible-punching hypocrites at the church and avoided showing his emotions, but had a streak of dreamy, sentimental tenderness. It was Hopkins Sr who deeply disliked the way they had to go humbly to their rich relatives like Auntie Patty, whose husband knew the politician Nye Bevan and could get young Anthony into a prestigious academy: “Since they are extremely wealthy!” he raves while traveling there. “We are all expecting handouts! Bloody rubbish, that's what it is!”

The grovelling paid off, for a while. Hopkins was a hopeless student at the prestigious school. But one day in a literature class he had to recite John Masefield's poem The West Wind – sight unseen – and that voice came to life; he amazed the instructor and the other students. He reasonably claims that poems, alone, started his career. This, along with enrolling in the YMCA drama club. Remarkably, he left school without much hope, entered the acting world, and amazingly to his parents, was on stage with Laurence Olivier at the famous theater in under a decade. He more or less did it on his own, although in those days financial aid was available to go to Rada – an opportunity for working-class actors. His dad remained in awe with Anthony's worldwide acclaim: upon requesting his son to recite the Yorick speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard listened carefully and then left the room and wept openly.

Concerning the volatile, stubborn individual, he departed the theatrical troupe in a moment of anger – much to Olivier's disappointment and displeasure – but stumbled upon an excellent television part as a suspected war criminal in the show based on Uris's work, which paved the way to roles such as in Lynch's The Elephant Man and a thriving starry career on screen, that he favored compared to stage acting. And he quit booze during the mid-70s once a notorious drinker, and managed to live into middle age to achieve remarkable acting, including Lecter, the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day alongside Emma Thompson and the old man with dementia in his film The Father – his next Oscar win.

In the later sections of his autobiography he appears more reserved, more deliberate. Some of the anecdotage aren't entirely successful. He remembers being taken out to lunch by his co-star in Oliver Stone's Nixon, the esteemed thespian Paul Sorvino, who wanted to tell him his portrayal of Nixon wasn't working. Was this the chance for him to absorb something from the legendary star of the Goodfellas fame? Not exactly. He tends to concur with the director's criticism of Sorvino as driven due to resentment. Really?

He often portrays the tough, down-to-earth professional actor who maintains you must to get there on time, learn everyone's name on set and proceed with the work. Indeed. However, he also describes facing a rude director who brought a background actor to tears: “Apologize to that girl! And learn some manners. If you ever repeat that near me, I'll alter your appearance!” Anthony comes across as someone who gave up drink but maybe not the belligerence that went with it. An actor of his caliber is aware of Cornwall's speech regarding Kent in King Lear: “He cannot flatter, he! A truthful and simple spirit – he always tells the truth!”

Anthony ends his memoir with a detailed supplement composed simply