After 65 years as one of Hollywood’s most respected actors, Anthony Hopkins is pivoting to a career in music.
The Silence of the Lambs star, 88, has signed a contract with record label Decca Classics and will begin his career as a classical music composer with the release of an album.
“Music was my first desire and my first wish,” the two-time Oscar winner said in a statement, according to the record label’s website.
“I’ve been composing music all my life,” he added. “Some of these pieces have lived with me for decades, and I still think of them.”
Life Is a Dream, an album of Hopkins’ songs spanning several decades, is scheduled for release on August 21st.
Decca said the actor’s original work was “inspired by Hopkins’ family, Wales and life experiences” and was performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.
The longtime actor’s first single from the album 1947: Suite for Solo Piano and Orchestra, “Bracken Road,” was released on Friday.
The label called “Life Is a Dream” the “Thor” actor’s “most personal musical project to date,” adding that it “features work written across different periods of Hopkins’ life and reveals a composer whose music shares the same emotional depth and storytelling that defined his film career.”
Decca went on to call the album an “intimate musical memoir, shaped by loved ones, imagination and tradition,” stating that “some pieces directly depict the landscape of his Welsh upbringing and childhood, while others reflect the important people and experiences that have accompanied him over the years.”
Despite having an illustrious and successful career that includes two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards and one Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the “Legends of the Fall” star has once knocked down the entertainment industry’s highest accolade.
“You know, I’ve been doing this all my life. I got an Oscar myself for ‘The Silence of the Lambs,’ and I had to be nice to people and be charming and play with them…Oh, come on!” he told HuffPost in 2012, before winning his second Oscar for “The Father.”
“I think it’s kind of disgusting that people go out of their way to go to the nominating bodies,” the Welsh actor added. “It was always against my nature.”
Hopkins is the latest celebrity to announce a surprising change after a long career.
Earlier this month, 80-year-old Dolly Parton announced she was heading to Broadway for her production, Dolly: The True Original Musical.
“This is truly a dream come true,” she said in a recent Instagram video. “I can’t wait to share it with you all.”
Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman, 59, revealed in April that she plans to become a death doula following the death of her mother, Janelle Ann Kidman, in September 2024.
Meanwhile, “Sex and the City” alum Jason Lewis, 54, moved to Costa Rica in May after years in hiding and revealed he has written nine “epic fantasy” books after working as an actor for 20 years.
