RON Perlman has been thinking a lot about life lately.

And death. Partly it is because he is the star of the new animated movie, The Book of Life, which is centred around Day of the Dead, the Mexican festival in which the gone are remembered. Partly it is due to bringing out his autobiography, and all the digging deep into his past that has involved.

The book is called Easy Street (The Hard Way), the title a riff on being an overnight success after 40 plus years in the acting business. At the age of 64, and with successes such as Hellboy, Drive, and the television drama Sons of Anarchy behind him, the man behind the Beauty and the Beast mask is coming into his own. Not that he believes himself quite there yet.

"Most of my career has been very indie, off the beaten path, and every time I'm in a studio film it's because one of the indie filmmakers I've liaised creatively with has snuck into the big leagues and invited me to come along," he says down the line from Los Angeles. "The only time I'm in a studio movie is when Guillermo del Toro directs, or Jean-Jacques Annaud, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Other than that I'm still not thought of in that world."

With Annaud he made Quest for Fire, shot in Scotland, and The Name of the Rose, with Sean Connery. The Jeunet gig was 1997's Alien: Resurrection.

It was Guillermo del Toro, the writer-director of cult comic book movie Hellboy, who asked him to take one of the lead voice roles in The Book of Life. Del Toro is a producer on the film, with Jorge R Gutierrez directing. Perlman plays Xibalba, a spirit from the underworld who places a bet on the futures of three young friends.

Perlman and the creator of Pan's Labyrinth have been friends since making Cronos together in 1993. "He is my brother, my blood and my confidant," del Toro writes in the foreword to Easy Street.

Perlman says: "He called me up as he always does and said I've got another juicy one for you, Perldito. Sure enough he sent me the script and he was right. It's such a juicy character and such a beautifully imagined world."

The working conditions on The Book of Life were a universe away from those experienced by Perlman when he filmed Quest for Fire in the Highlands. A drama set in prehistoric times, Perlman is reminded of making Quest every time he is cold and his fingers and toes hurt.

"It's a gorgeous time to be in Scotland, if you have shoes on. It's the late fall, everything is changing, you're in the Highlands so you are really getting a dose of nature at its most explosive. The unfortunate part is that we were naked all the way up to our necks. Having to perform in those conditions in that way made it somewhat challenging."

The 33-years married father of two became further enamoured of Scotland after working on The Name of the Rose with Connery, a screen hero who lived up to expectations. He writes: "In my mind there was everybody else, and then there was Sean. To this day I feel as though Sean Connery is the last of the great movie stars of old, like in the mould of the guys who were around when I was a kid growing up - larger-than-life, guy-guys . . . nothing ephemeral about them. Complete masculine forces of nature. Like Gable, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Jimmy Stewart, and Robert Mitchum. Sean was cut from that cloth. And there have not been any to replace him."

In Name of the Rose, Perlman's character was severely disabled. It was not the first time he had to act from under prostheses, but no part was to call for as much make-up as his hit television show Beauty and the Beast. From an early age, as he recounts in the book, Perlman had been self-conscious about his distinctive looks. For him, Beauty and the Beast was "free psychotherapy".

"I grew up feeling there were two Rons, the one on the outside that I formed a bunch of negative opinions around and there was the one on the inside that I wanted everybody to get to know because I felt like that was the real me," he says.

It took a while before he got to a point where he could look in the mirror and say, "You're all right, Ron". It came in stages he explains. At 13 he had to go on a strict diet, then again at 17 to get into college.

"I started to become thinner and more acceptable but the internal part, the part where I really became comfortable in my own skin … was a very, very slow evolution. It really didn't start to feel as though I was okay until my forties. My best decade in terms of self-image was my fifties, that's when I began to finally say okay you're all right. It came with a lot of searching, a lot of therapy, a lot of stuff I talk about in the book."

Perlman has a slew of films coming up, including the drama Stonewall, and the crime thriller The Jesuit. He has also formed his own production company, and has moved into pre-production on four of the ten films he plans to make. What many will want to know, though, is whether he will be back on duty soon as Hellboy, the lobster-red, cigar-chomping superhero.

"There's no plan in reality to do Hellboy 3. There's a plan in my head to do it. I'm fighting for it every day but it's going to require more people than myself to get something on board because there are a lot of resources that need to be poured into a film of that magnitude."

Hellboy is so beloved, he reckons, because he is "a blue collar superhero". He's a guy who drinks beer, eats pizza, and he has a girlfriend who is "kicking his ass". Oh, and he gets drunk and sings Barry Manilow songs. Does Perlman like a bit of Barry? "Who doesn't like Barry Manilow?"

His book is searingly honest, not least about the acting business and all its myriad rejections. But Perlman has no regrets about setting everything down.

"People encouraged me to go deep and I'm kinda glad I did. I'm getting amazing responses. I'm really glad I did what I did and how I did it."

Above all, it is a hymn to acting, a paean to sticking with it.

"If it wasn't for acting I sometimes think I would be homeless because I really don't have any other skillset. Certainly no other passion anything close to this one. I'm a pretty lucky guy that I got to (a) be in the business and (b) make a living in the business, make a life for myself and raise kids."

The Book of Life opens in cinemas on October 24. Easy Street (The Hard Way) is published by Da Capo Press.