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Sir Anthony Hopkins, 88, Finds a New Way to Follow His Passion
His new orchestral album was inspired by his childhood in Wales, family, self-doubt and aging
Sir Anthony Hopkins, seen here on Dec. 11, 2025, is releasing an album of original music at age 88.
Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images for The Red Sea International Film Festival
Key takeaways
- Sir Anthony Hopkins is releasing Life Is a Dream, his first album of orchestral compositions.
- Hopkins wanted to become a musician before acting took his career in a different direction.
- He said in a new interview that he’s not afraid of mortality.
Sir Anthony Hopkins is 88, still working and still making room for firsts.
Hopkins is releasing Life Is a Dream, his first album of orchestral compositions, on Aug. 21, after decades of writing music largely outside the spotlight.
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“I’ve been walking around with a question mark over my head,” Hopkins told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published Aug. 11.
In a separate interview with the Associated Press published Aug. 12, Hopkins said the doubt goes even deeper when he confronts his own work.
“There’s a part of me which says, ‘You didn’t write that,’ ” he said of composing the album. “What’s it called? Impostor syndrome.”
Music has been part of his life since childhood.
“My first love, or vocation really, is music,” he told the AP. “That sounds very official, but I was raised with a lot of music [of the] postwar years, and it influenced me. And I started playing the piano when I was quite young.”
According to the AP, Hopkins began playing piano at 4 and wrote his first composition, a waltz, in 1960, when he was 22.
“I find more freedom with music,” he said in the AP interview.
Hopkins has acted for more than six decades and remains best known for his Oscar-winning role as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. He also starred in films including The Remains of the Day, Nixon and Amistad. Hopkins, who grew up in Margam, Wales, applied to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, Wales, “hoping to become a musician,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
An impromptu acting audition changed that plan.
But he never gave up music.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Hopkins has been composing formally for at least 30 years. In 1996, while directing August, composer George Fenton encouraged him to work with a keyboard loaded with instrument samples.
“The opening of Shadowlands is my first adventure in composing music,” Hopkins told the AP, referring to the 1993 film in which he portrayed C.S. Lewis.
Now he is putting that work in front of listeners on a larger scale.
The 12-track album was recorded by London’s Philharmonia Orchestra with Gustavo Dudamel conducting, according to the Los Angeles Times. Hopkins’ wife, Stella, encouraged him to keep composing and contacted Dudamel through a mutual friend.
Follow your passion
Hopkins’ decision to put a lifelong passion center stage at 88 is a useful reminder that trying something new does not have to mean starting from scratch. AARP’s guide to learning new skills later in life offers practical advice on embracing beginnerhood, staying open to failure and making room for pursuits that bring genuine enjoyment.
The album draws on memories of his parents, his hometown and his childhood in Wales, as well as his relationship with Stella.
“It’s about my childhood,” he told the AP. “It’s basically the memories of my childhood and growing up in Wales, and my developments in life, my adolescent years” and more.
Hopkins is also using the music to wrestle with aging and the passage of time.
“There’s a great sadness in it all because — don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a wonderful life — but underneath it all, there is the knowledge that life is one long goodbye. From the moment we’re born, we begin to die,” he told the AP.
He added, laughing at the thought even as he said it: “Sounds so cheerful!”
That tension runs through the album.
“I look at my own life now, and especially this year; I’m going to be 89 at the end of the year. And I look back and I’m thinking, Good God, I couldn’t have planned any of this,” he told the AP.
“I’m without fear of mortality,” he added. “I’m just so grateful I’ve lived this long.”
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