Anthony Hopkins will launch his career as a classical music composer at the age of 88.
The actor has signed a contract with record label Decca Classics and will release an album, after a 65-year-stint as one of Hollywood’s top actors.
“Music was my first desire, my first wish,” the two-time Oscar winner wrote in a statement shared on the record label’s website and by Page Six.
“I’ve been composing music all my life,” he added. “Some of these pieces have lived with me for decades, and I still find myself returning to them.”
“My whole life is a dream. Signing with Decca is the honour of a lifetime.”
The album, titled Life is a Dream, is set for release on August 21 and contains decades-worth of Hopkins’ compositions.
According to the record label, the album was inspired by “Hopkins’ family, Wales and a lifetime of experience”. It was performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.
The first single Bracken Road dropped Friday and was inspired by his childhood memories of Margam in south Wales and the natural scenery that surrounded his family home in the 1940s.
The single was composed by Hopkins in 1963 when he was a young actor at the Liverpool Playhouse.
The actor called this his “most personal musical project to date,” with the music label adding that it “features works written across different periods of Hopkins’ life, revealing a composer whose music shares the same emotional depth and storytelling that define his screen career.”
Several pieces are also inspired by the actor’s Welsh upbringing, reflecting on his childhood and the experiences that have shaped him over the years.
The actor has had a successful acting career, with two Academy Awards, four BAFTAs, a pair of Primetime Emmys and a Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Golden Globes.
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