Sir Anthony Hopkins has signed a record deal at the age of 88 — with a new album of classical pieces composed across six decades, inspired by his childhood in Margam.
The Port Talbot-born actor described signing with Decca Classics as “the honour of a lifetime”. The album, Life Is A Dream, is released on 21 August.
The first single, Bracken Road, came out on Friday. Taken from his 1947: Suite for Solo Piano and Orchestra, it is a musical portrait of the streets, meadows, farmland and mountains that surrounded his family home in the 1940s.
Sir Anthony first found the melody in 1963, as a young actor at the Liverpool Playhouse improvising at an upright piano backstage on quiet mornings before rehearsals.
The double Oscar winner began playing the piano at four, performing Beethoven and Chopin within a few years, and was composing music for local plays as a teenager in the 1950s. “Music was my first desire, my first wish,” he said. “I’ve been composing music all my life.”
“Some of these pieces have lived with me for decades and I still find myself returning to them,” he added. “My whole life is a dream.”
The album was recorded at Alexandra Palace in London in April, performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Grammy Award-winning conductor Gustavo Dudamel, with soloists including pianist Sergio Tiempo and cellist Gregorio Nieto, alongside The Bach Choir and the Choristers of Winchester Cathedral.
Dudamel said Sir Anthony was one of those rare artists whose creative voice crossed mediums, approaching music “with the heart of a storyteller and the instincts of a poet”.
Wales runs through the record. On another track, My Fatherland, Sir Anthony said he set out to “honour my humble beginnings” — adding: “I am the son of my father, the baker.”
Other compositions draw on his memories of Port Talbot, childhood visits with his grandfather, the cinema that first caught his imagination, and the people closest to him.
It is not his first recording — his 2012 album Composer was performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and his waltz And the Waltz Goes On was premiered by André Rieu the same year, with a teary-eyed Sir Anthony watching from the audience.
Sir Anthony is not even the area’s only knighted composer making history this year. Sir Karl Jenkins, who grew up in Penclawdd, became the first living composer to top the Classic FM Hall of Fame in April, with The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace voted Britain’s favourite piece of classical music — the two Welsh knights making a strong case that south-west Wales punches above its weight in the concert hall as well as on screen.
Sir Anthony’s music has found audiences in unlikely places since his 2012 album: his lockdown piano videos — often featuring his cat — became a viral fixture in 2020, and footage of him serenading hotel staff from a lobby grand piano did the rounds in 2023.
He won his first Academy Award in 1992 for his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, and his second for the 2020 film The Father. He is currently back on Welsh soil filming Dylan Thomas adaptation A Visit to Grandpa’s alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones.
The timing could hardly be neater for his hometown. Hours before the single’s release, Port Talbot and the Afan Valley were shortlisted for the first ever UK Town of Culture, with up to £3m on offer to stage a six-month cultural programme in 2028.
That bid leans heavily on the creative legacy of the town they call Little Hollywood — Richard Burton born in Pontrhydyfen, Rob Brydon raised in Baglan, Michael Sheen its modern standard-bearer, and Sir Anthony brought up in Margam, where a mural of the actor has been taking shape this summer.
The Wales Office said the town was renowned for producing some of the country’s greatest actors, all of them inspired by the area’s industrial heritage. With Life Is A Dream, its most famous son has turned that inspiration into an album. The Town of Culture winner is announced early next year.
