‘Music was my first passion’: Anthony Hopkins releases single | Music

Anthony Hopkins says he fulfilled his “first wish” of signing a record, when one was released on Friday.

The 88-year-old Hollywood star’s debut album, Life Is a Dream, will be released next month by Decca Classics. It is a collection of pieces he has created over sixty years.

The single, Bracken Road, was inspired by his childhood memories of Margam in south Wales and the roads, meadows, fields and hills that surrounded his family in the 1940s.

Hopkins, who won an Oscar for his roles in Silence of the Lambs and The Father, said: “Music was my first passion, my first passion, I’ve been writing music all my life.

His music is performed by Grammy-winning conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Philharmonia Orchestra.

The actor, who was born in Port Talbot, wrote songs from an early age and started playing the piano at the age of four.

He said: “It has been a great privilege to collaborate with the famous Philharmonia Orchestra and the virtuoso soloists, Gregorio Nieto and the classical pianist Sergio Tiempo.”

“With the perfect precision of his staff, he transformed each note into a deep and lasting meaning, creating an image that makes the audience feel and think about the individual.”

Bracken Road was created by Hopkins in 1963 when he was a young actor at the Liverpool Playhouse. He pays tribute to Wales on the album’s other track, My Fatherland, a section he says he wrote to “honor my humble beginnings” adding: “I’m my father’s son, the baker.”

Other entries in the album reminisce about Port Talbot, childhood visits to his grandfather’s, the cinema that first attracted him and the people around him.

Laura Monks, president of Decca, said: “It is a great honor to have the great Sir Anthony Hopkins join Decca Classics.