Life begins as a fanfare — a regal entry heralded by brass — and ends as a solo cello lament and the serene acceptance of death as sung by a choir. Everything in between is a dream, at least according to Anthony Hopkins, composer of orchestral music.
The renowned actor has played piano his whole life, and formally written music for at least 30 years, but it might still surprise many to learn that later this month Hopkins will release his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” on Decca Classics. Featuring 12 tracks written over decades, the music was recorded by London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, the soon-to-depart music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Such an impressive classical pedigree belies the “gremlins of self-doubt” that have plagued Hopkins for much of his life.
“I’ve been walking around with a question mark over my head,” Hopkins, 88, said during a recent interview at the Hotel Bel-Air. “Maybe I suffer from impostor syndrome.”
It all started — both the music and the doubt — in childhood, when “Tony” was growing up in the Welsh suburb of Margam where his father was a tough, no-nonsense baker.
“In school, I was a complete idiot,” said Hopkins, sitting comfortably with a cup of tea and a plate of Fig Newtons. “Didn’t have a clue, you know. And that’s why people who are poor students sometimes become very successful — because they fight against the odds.”
He was hopeless at math and likely dyslexic, but said he was utterly transfixed by music. Hopkins remembers going backstage to get an autograph from the Spanish pianist José Iturbi when he played a concert in Cardiff, and discovering the beauty of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” at a show in Swansea. He also recalls first hearing a recording of Joan Hammond singing “O My Beloved Father” from Puccini’s opera, “Gianni Schicchi.”
With the release of his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” Anthony Hopkins is grateful he can take time to focus on his first true love: music.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“When I mention these pieces, they still cut straight through me,” Hopkins said. “As a boy, I’d start weeping. And boys don’t cry; I’d blubber. I couldn’t help it — it was like a knife going into me. And my father said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ So I started piano lessons.”
Hopkins kept playing, and even wrote little ditties on staff paper. In 1955 he applied to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, “hoping to become a musician.” But an impromptu audition with material from “Othello” suddenly swerved him into the acting profession — where he has done quite well.
Time marched on, and in 1996, when the two-time Oscar winner was directing his first feature, “August,” he asked composer George Fenton if he would score the film. Fenton, who had recently scored “Shadowlands,” in which Hopkins played the author C.S. Lewis, was overbooked, but knew Hopkins played piano and asked if he also composed.
“He said, ‘Play something. You write — I know you do. Come on, play something,’” Hopkins said, imitating the wince he gave Fenton at the time. “He said, ‘Why are you pulling a face? Just do it.”
Fenton set Hopkins up with a keyboard loaded with samples of every instrument, and an internal switch was flipped: now the actor could compose for orchestra.
“George said, ‘You have a real talent for music. You’re a musician.’ I said, ‘Am I?’ ‘Yeah! Don’t question it,’ he said. ‘You break all the rules. That’s pretty good.’”
Anthony Hopkins wanted to study music before a unexpected audition in college sent him off in the direction of acting.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“Margam,” a track on the new album, comes from that 1996 score. Most of these miniatures and tone poems were inspired by Hopkins’ childhood — his parents, his hometown, the day the circus came. They are also all, he said, about a series of goodbyes.
Hopkins’ voice, still deeply familiar as some of film’s most famous characters, including the serial killer Hannibal Lecter and the English butler, James Stevens, from “Remains of the Day,” now has a weathered rasp.
At his age, he’s “beginning to understand that from the moment we’re born we say goodbye — we say goodbye to the womb, say goodbye to childhood, going through adolescence, wonderful, goodbye to that. You reach a certain age, you think: this is it. It’s one long goodbye.”
The music on the new record is vivid in its storytelling and unapologetically emotional, lyrical and expressive. Languid piano tunes give way to surging, keening tides of strings. Hopkins weaves in old Welsh folk tunes and nods to impressionistic inspirations like Vaughan Williams and Frederick Delius. “Life Is a Dream” is, essentially, a collection of love letters: to his wife Stella, to Margam, to the life he knows won’t last forever.
Stella Hopkins — avidly praised by her husband for pushing him past his self-doubt and encouraging him to compose — reached out to Dudamel through their mutual friend, Bradley Cooper, and the busy conductor spent the Christmas holiday looking over the scores.
“From the first pages I felt something very genuine,” Dudamel wrote in an email. “There is honesty in this music. It comes from a place of deep feeling, and I immediately wanted to help bring it to life.”
Stephen Barton, the BAFTA-nominated British composer credited with “score preparation” on the album, noted that if classical fans think of the music as an actor’s vanity project, they should think again.
“Everything you hear is him, is his orchestration, his arrangement,” said Barton. who was introduced to Hopkins 20 years ago by composer Harry Gregson-Williams.
Like Fenton, Barton has lent his writing studio (located inside Abbey Road Studios) and sample software to Hopkins. “I would pull up an oboe sound, and he’d play it,” says Barton, “and it was sort of a childlike thing where he was just like, ‘Oh, this allows me to hear my ideas.’”
Dudamel — who opened the music up “like a bottle of wine,” said Hopkins — brought along pianist Sergio Tiempo and cellist Gregorio Nieto from Venezuela. Two large choirs also joined the orchestra at the sessions in April, which took place at Alexandra Palace in north London.
The final piece on the album, “Samsara,” is inspired by an ancient Mesopotamian fable about the inevitability of death. Hopkins said he is becoming more at peace with slowing down his hectic acting career, and of appreciating the time he’s been given. He’s also very glad for the opportunity to focus on his first love: music.
“These themes seem morbid,” he admitted, “but I think there is great solace in the stories because, after all the great life forces that drive us to make meaning and success of our existence, there on the distant hill we see the single lone figure who beckons us. It’s a form of prayer.”
Life begins as a fanfare — a regal entry heralded by brass — and ends as a solo cello lament and the serene acceptance of death as sung by a choir. Everything in between is a dream, at least according to Anthony Hopkins, composer of orchestral music.
The renowned actor has played piano his whole life, and formally written music for at least 30 years, but it might still surprise many to learn that later this month Hopkins will release his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” on Decca Classics. Featuring 12 tracks written over decades, the music was recorded by London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, the soon-to-depart music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Such an impressive classical pedigree belies the “gremlins of self-doubt” that have plagued Hopkins for much of his life.
“I’ve been walking around with a question mark over my head,” Hopkins, 88, said during a recent interview at the Hotel Bel-Air. “Maybe I suffer from impostor syndrome.”
It all started — both the music and the doubt — in childhood, when “Tony” was growing up in the Welsh suburb of Margam where his father was a tough, no-nonsense baker.
“In school, I was a complete idiot,” said Hopkins, sitting comfortably with a cup of tea and a plate of Fig Newtons. “Didn’t have a clue, you know. And that’s why people who are poor students sometimes become very successful — because they fight against the odds.”
He was hopeless at math and likely dyslexic, but said he was utterly transfixed by music. Hopkins remembers going backstage to get an autograph from the Spanish pianist José Iturbi when he played a concert in Cardiff, and discovering the beauty of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” at a show in Swansea. He also recalls first hearing a recording of Joan Hammond singing “O My Beloved Father” from Puccini’s opera, “Gianni Schicchi.”
With the release of his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” Anthony Hopkins is grateful he can take time to focus on his first true love: music.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“When I mention these pieces, they still cut straight through me,” Hopkins said. “As a boy, I’d start weeping. And boys don’t cry; I’d blubber. I couldn’t help it — it was like a knife going into me. And my father said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ So I started piano lessons.”
Hopkins kept playing, and even wrote little ditties on staff paper. In 1955 he applied to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, “hoping to become a musician.” But an impromptu audition with material from “Othello” suddenly swerved him into the acting profession — where he has done quite well.
Time marched on, and in 1996, when the two-time Oscar winner was directing his first feature, “August,” he asked composer George Fenton if he would score the film. Fenton, who had recently scored “Shadowlands,” in which Hopkins played the author C.S. Lewis, was overbooked, but knew Hopkins played piano and asked if he also composed.
“He said, ‘Play something. You write — I know you do. Come on, play something,’” Hopkins said, imitating the wince he gave Fenton at the time. “He said, ‘Why are you pulling a face? Just do it.”
Fenton set Hopkins up with a keyboard loaded with samples of every instrument, and an internal switch was flipped: now the actor could compose for orchestra.
“George said, ‘You have a real talent for music. You’re a musician.’ I said, ‘Am I?’ ‘Yeah! Don’t question it,’ he said. ‘You break all the rules. That’s pretty good.’”
Anthony Hopkins wanted to study music before a unexpected audition in college sent him off in the direction of acting.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“Margam,” a track on the new album, comes from that 1996 score. Most of these miniatures and tone poems were inspired by Hopkins’ childhood — his parents, his hometown, the day the circus came. They are also all, he said, about a series of goodbyes.
Hopkins’ voice, still deeply familiar as some of film’s most famous characters, including the serial killer Hannibal Lecter and the English butler, James Stevens, from “Remains of the Day,” now has a weathered rasp.
At his age, he’s “beginning to understand that from the moment we’re born we say goodbye — we say goodbye to the womb, say goodbye to childhood, going through adolescence, wonderful, goodbye to that. You reach a certain age, you think: this is it. It’s one long goodbye.”
The music on the new record is vivid in its storytelling and unapologetically emotional, lyrical and expressive. Languid piano tunes give way to surging, keening tides of strings. Hopkins weaves in old Welsh folk tunes and nods to impressionistic inspirations like Vaughan Williams and Frederick Delius. “Life Is a Dream” is, essentially, a collection of love letters: to his wife Stella, to Margam, to the life he knows won’t last forever.
Stella Hopkins — avidly praised by her husband for pushing him past his self-doubt and encouraging him to compose — reached out to Dudamel through their mutual friend, Bradley Cooper, and the busy conductor spent the Christmas holiday looking over the scores.
“From the first pages I felt something very genuine,” Dudamel wrote in an email. “There is honesty in this music. It comes from a place of deep feeling, and I immediately wanted to help bring it to life.”
Stephen Barton, the BAFTA-nominated British composer credited with “score preparation” on the album, noted that if classical fans think of the music as an actor’s vanity project, they should think again.
“Everything you hear is him, is his orchestration, his arrangement,” said Barton. who was introduced to Hopkins 20 years ago by composer Harry Gregson-Williams.
Like Fenton, Barton has lent his writing studio (located inside Abbey Road Studios) and sample software to Hopkins. “I would pull up an oboe sound, and he’d play it,” says Barton, “and it was sort of a childlike thing where he was just like, ‘Oh, this allows me to hear my ideas.’”
Dudamel — who opened the music up “like a bottle of wine,” said Hopkins — brought along pianist Sergio Tiempo and cellist Gregorio Nieto from Venezuela. Two large choirs also joined the orchestra at the sessions in April, which took place at Alexandra Palace in north London.
The final piece on the album, “Samsara,” is inspired by an ancient Mesopotamian fable about the inevitability of death. Hopkins said he is becoming more at peace with slowing down his hectic acting career, and of appreciating the time he’s been given. He’s also very glad for the opportunity to focus on his first love: music.
“These themes seem morbid,” he admitted, “but I think there is great solace in the stories because, after all the great life forces that drive us to make meaning and success of our existence, there on the distant hill we see the single lone figure who beckons us. It’s a form of prayer.”
Life begins as a fanfare — a regal entry heralded by brass — and ends as a solo cello lament and the serene acceptance of death as sung by a choir. Everything in between is a dream, at least according to Anthony Hopkins, composer of orchestral music.
The renowned actor has played piano his whole life, and formally written music for at least 30 years, but it might still surprise many to learn that later this month Hopkins will release his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” on Decca Classics. Featuring 12 tracks written over decades, the music was recorded by London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, the soon-to-depart music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Such an impressive classical pedigree belies the “gremlins of self-doubt” that have plagued Hopkins for much of his life.
“I’ve been walking around with a question mark over my head,” Hopkins, 88, said during a recent interview at the Hotel Bel-Air. “Maybe I suffer from impostor syndrome.”
It all started — both the music and the doubt — in childhood, when “Tony” was growing up in the Welsh suburb of Margam where his father was a tough, no-nonsense baker.
“In school, I was a complete idiot,” said Hopkins, sitting comfortably with a cup of tea and a plate of Fig Newtons. “Didn’t have a clue, you know. And that’s why people who are poor students sometimes become very successful — because they fight against the odds.”
He was hopeless at math and likely dyslexic, but said he was utterly transfixed by music. Hopkins remembers going backstage to get an autograph from the Spanish pianist José Iturbi when he played a concert in Cardiff, and discovering the beauty of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” at a show in Swansea. He also recalls first hearing a recording of Joan Hammond singing “O My Beloved Father” from Puccini’s opera, “Gianni Schicchi.”
With the release of his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” Anthony Hopkins is grateful he can take time to focus on his first true love: music.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“When I mention these pieces, they still cut straight through me,” Hopkins said. “As a boy, I’d start weeping. And boys don’t cry; I’d blubber. I couldn’t help it — it was like a knife going into me. And my father said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ So I started piano lessons.”
Hopkins kept playing, and even wrote little ditties on staff paper. In 1955 he applied to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, “hoping to become a musician.” But an impromptu audition with material from “Othello” suddenly swerved him into the acting profession — where he has done quite well.
Time marched on, and in 1996, when the two-time Oscar winner was directing his first feature, “August,” he asked composer George Fenton if he would score the film. Fenton, who had recently scored “Shadowlands,” in which Hopkins played the author C.S. Lewis, was overbooked, but knew Hopkins played piano and asked if he also composed.
“He said, ‘Play something. You write — I know you do. Come on, play something,’” Hopkins said, imitating the wince he gave Fenton at the time. “He said, ‘Why are you pulling a face? Just do it.”
Fenton set Hopkins up with a keyboard loaded with samples of every instrument, and an internal switch was flipped: now the actor could compose for orchestra.
“George said, ‘You have a real talent for music. You’re a musician.’ I said, ‘Am I?’ ‘Yeah! Don’t question it,’ he said. ‘You break all the rules. That’s pretty good.’”
Anthony Hopkins wanted to study music before a unexpected audition in college sent him off in the direction of acting.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“Margam,” a track on the new album, comes from that 1996 score. Most of these miniatures and tone poems were inspired by Hopkins’ childhood — his parents, his hometown, the day the circus came. They are also all, he said, about a series of goodbyes.
Hopkins’ voice, still deeply familiar as some of film’s most famous characters, including the serial killer Hannibal Lecter and the English butler, James Stevens, from “Remains of the Day,” now has a weathered rasp.
At his age, he’s “beginning to understand that from the moment we’re born we say goodbye — we say goodbye to the womb, say goodbye to childhood, going through adolescence, wonderful, goodbye to that. You reach a certain age, you think: this is it. It’s one long goodbye.”
The music on the new record is vivid in its storytelling and unapologetically emotional, lyrical and expressive. Languid piano tunes give way to surging, keening tides of strings. Hopkins weaves in old Welsh folk tunes and nods to impressionistic inspirations like Vaughan Williams and Frederick Delius. “Life Is a Dream” is, essentially, a collection of love letters: to his wife Stella, to Margam, to the life he knows won’t last forever.
Stella Hopkins — avidly praised by her husband for pushing him past his self-doubt and encouraging him to compose — reached out to Dudamel through their mutual friend, Bradley Cooper, and the busy conductor spent the Christmas holiday looking over the scores.
“From the first pages I felt something very genuine,” Dudamel wrote in an email. “There is honesty in this music. It comes from a place of deep feeling, and I immediately wanted to help bring it to life.”
Stephen Barton, the BAFTA-nominated British composer credited with “score preparation” on the album, noted that if classical fans think of the music as an actor’s vanity project, they should think again.
“Everything you hear is him, is his orchestration, his arrangement,” said Barton. who was introduced to Hopkins 20 years ago by composer Harry Gregson-Williams.
Like Fenton, Barton has lent his writing studio (located inside Abbey Road Studios) and sample software to Hopkins. “I would pull up an oboe sound, and he’d play it,” says Barton, “and it was sort of a childlike thing where he was just like, ‘Oh, this allows me to hear my ideas.’”
Dudamel — who opened the music up “like a bottle of wine,” said Hopkins — brought along pianist Sergio Tiempo and cellist Gregorio Nieto from Venezuela. Two large choirs also joined the orchestra at the sessions in April, which took place at Alexandra Palace in north London.
The final piece on the album, “Samsara,” is inspired by an ancient Mesopotamian fable about the inevitability of death. Hopkins said he is becoming more at peace with slowing down his hectic acting career, and of appreciating the time he’s been given. He’s also very glad for the opportunity to focus on his first love: music.
“These themes seem morbid,” he admitted, “but I think there is great solace in the stories because, after all the great life forces that drive us to make meaning and success of our existence, there on the distant hill we see the single lone figure who beckons us. It’s a form of prayer.”
Life begins as a fanfare — a regal entry heralded by brass — and ends as a solo cello lament and the serene acceptance of death as sung by a choir. Everything in between is a dream, at least according to Anthony Hopkins, composer of orchestral music.
The renowned actor has played piano his whole life, and formally written music for at least 30 years, but it might still surprise many to learn that later this month Hopkins will release his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” on Decca Classics. Featuring 12 tracks written over decades, the music was recorded by London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, the soon-to-depart music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Such an impressive classical pedigree belies the “gremlins of self-doubt” that have plagued Hopkins for much of his life.
“I’ve been walking around with a question mark over my head,” Hopkins, 88, said during a recent interview at the Hotel Bel-Air. “Maybe I suffer from impostor syndrome.”
It all started — both the music and the doubt — in childhood, when “Tony” was growing up in the Welsh suburb of Margam where his father was a tough, no-nonsense baker.
“In school, I was a complete idiot,” said Hopkins, sitting comfortably with a cup of tea and a plate of Fig Newtons. “Didn’t have a clue, you know. And that’s why people who are poor students sometimes become very successful — because they fight against the odds.”
He was hopeless at math and likely dyslexic, but said he was utterly transfixed by music. Hopkins remembers going backstage to get an autograph from the Spanish pianist José Iturbi when he played a concert in Cardiff, and discovering the beauty of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” at a show in Swansea. He also recalls first hearing a recording of Joan Hammond singing “O My Beloved Father” from Puccini’s opera, “Gianni Schicchi.”
With the release of his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” Anthony Hopkins is grateful he can take time to focus on his first true love: music.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“When I mention these pieces, they still cut straight through me,” Hopkins said. “As a boy, I’d start weeping. And boys don’t cry; I’d blubber. I couldn’t help it — it was like a knife going into me. And my father said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ So I started piano lessons.”
Hopkins kept playing, and even wrote little ditties on staff paper. In 1955 he applied to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, “hoping to become a musician.” But an impromptu audition with material from “Othello” suddenly swerved him into the acting profession — where he has done quite well.
Time marched on, and in 1996, when the two-time Oscar winner was directing his first feature, “August,” he asked composer George Fenton if he would score the film. Fenton, who had recently scored “Shadowlands,” in which Hopkins played the author C.S. Lewis, was overbooked, but knew Hopkins played piano and asked if he also composed.
“He said, ‘Play something. You write — I know you do. Come on, play something,’” Hopkins said, imitating the wince he gave Fenton at the time. “He said, ‘Why are you pulling a face? Just do it.”
Fenton set Hopkins up with a keyboard loaded with samples of every instrument, and an internal switch was flipped: now the actor could compose for orchestra.
“George said, ‘You have a real talent for music. You’re a musician.’ I said, ‘Am I?’ ‘Yeah! Don’t question it,’ he said. ‘You break all the rules. That’s pretty good.’”
Anthony Hopkins wanted to study music before a unexpected audition in college sent him off in the direction of acting.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“Margam,” a track on the new album, comes from that 1996 score. Most of these miniatures and tone poems were inspired by Hopkins’ childhood — his parents, his hometown, the day the circus came. They are also all, he said, about a series of goodbyes.
Hopkins’ voice, still deeply familiar as some of film’s most famous characters, including the serial killer Hannibal Lecter and the English butler, James Stevens, from “Remains of the Day,” now has a weathered rasp.
At his age, he’s “beginning to understand that from the moment we’re born we say goodbye — we say goodbye to the womb, say goodbye to childhood, going through adolescence, wonderful, goodbye to that. You reach a certain age, you think: this is it. It’s one long goodbye.”
The music on the new record is vivid in its storytelling and unapologetically emotional, lyrical and expressive. Languid piano tunes give way to surging, keening tides of strings. Hopkins weaves in old Welsh folk tunes and nods to impressionistic inspirations like Vaughan Williams and Frederick Delius. “Life Is a Dream” is, essentially, a collection of love letters: to his wife Stella, to Margam, to the life he knows won’t last forever.
Stella Hopkins — avidly praised by her husband for pushing him past his self-doubt and encouraging him to compose — reached out to Dudamel through their mutual friend, Bradley Cooper, and the busy conductor spent the Christmas holiday looking over the scores.
“From the first pages I felt something very genuine,” Dudamel wrote in an email. “There is honesty in this music. It comes from a place of deep feeling, and I immediately wanted to help bring it to life.”
Stephen Barton, the BAFTA-nominated British composer credited with “score preparation” on the album, noted that if classical fans think of the music as an actor’s vanity project, they should think again.
“Everything you hear is him, is his orchestration, his arrangement,” said Barton. who was introduced to Hopkins 20 years ago by composer Harry Gregson-Williams.
Like Fenton, Barton has lent his writing studio (located inside Abbey Road Studios) and sample software to Hopkins. “I would pull up an oboe sound, and he’d play it,” says Barton, “and it was sort of a childlike thing where he was just like, ‘Oh, this allows me to hear my ideas.’”
Dudamel — who opened the music up “like a bottle of wine,” said Hopkins — brought along pianist Sergio Tiempo and cellist Gregorio Nieto from Venezuela. Two large choirs also joined the orchestra at the sessions in April, which took place at Alexandra Palace in north London.
The final piece on the album, “Samsara,” is inspired by an ancient Mesopotamian fable about the inevitability of death. Hopkins said he is becoming more at peace with slowing down his hectic acting career, and of appreciating the time he’s been given. He’s also very glad for the opportunity to focus on his first love: music.
“These themes seem morbid,” he admitted, “but I think there is great solace in the stories because, after all the great life forces that drive us to make meaning and success of our existence, there on the distant hill we see the single lone figure who beckons us. It’s a form of prayer.”
Life begins as a fanfare — a regal entry heralded by brass — and ends as a solo cello lament and the serene acceptance of death as sung by a choir. Everything in between is a dream, at least according to Anthony Hopkins, composer of orchestral music.
The renowned actor has played piano his whole life, and formally written music for at least 30 years, but it might still surprise many to learn that later this month Hopkins will release his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” on Decca Classics. Featuring 12 tracks written over decades, the music was recorded by London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, the soon-to-depart music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Such an impressive classical pedigree belies the “gremlins of self-doubt” that have plagued Hopkins for much of his life.
“I’ve been walking around with a question mark over my head,” Hopkins, 88, said during a recent interview at the Hotel Bel-Air. “Maybe I suffer from impostor syndrome.”
It all started — both the music and the doubt — in childhood, when “Tony” was growing up in the Welsh suburb of Margam where his father was a tough, no-nonsense baker.
“In school, I was a complete idiot,” said Hopkins, sitting comfortably with a cup of tea and a plate of Fig Newtons. “Didn’t have a clue, you know. And that’s why people who are poor students sometimes become very successful — because they fight against the odds.”
He was hopeless at math and likely dyslexic, but said he was utterly transfixed by music. Hopkins remembers going backstage to get an autograph from the Spanish pianist José Iturbi when he played a concert in Cardiff, and discovering the beauty of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” at a show in Swansea. He also recalls first hearing a recording of Joan Hammond singing “O My Beloved Father” from Puccini’s opera, “Gianni Schicchi.”
With the release of his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” Anthony Hopkins is grateful he can take time to focus on his first true love: music.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“When I mention these pieces, they still cut straight through me,” Hopkins said. “As a boy, I’d start weeping. And boys don’t cry; I’d blubber. I couldn’t help it — it was like a knife going into me. And my father said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ So I started piano lessons.”
Hopkins kept playing, and even wrote little ditties on staff paper. In 1955 he applied to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, “hoping to become a musician.” But an impromptu audition with material from “Othello” suddenly swerved him into the acting profession — where he has done quite well.
Time marched on, and in 1996, when the two-time Oscar winner was directing his first feature, “August,” he asked composer George Fenton if he would score the film. Fenton, who had recently scored “Shadowlands,” in which Hopkins played the author C.S. Lewis, was overbooked, but knew Hopkins played piano and asked if he also composed.
“He said, ‘Play something. You write — I know you do. Come on, play something,’” Hopkins said, imitating the wince he gave Fenton at the time. “He said, ‘Why are you pulling a face? Just do it.”
Fenton set Hopkins up with a keyboard loaded with samples of every instrument, and an internal switch was flipped: now the actor could compose for orchestra.
“George said, ‘You have a real talent for music. You’re a musician.’ I said, ‘Am I?’ ‘Yeah! Don’t question it,’ he said. ‘You break all the rules. That’s pretty good.’”
Anthony Hopkins wanted to study music before a unexpected audition in college sent him off in the direction of acting.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“Margam,” a track on the new album, comes from that 1996 score. Most of these miniatures and tone poems were inspired by Hopkins’ childhood — his parents, his hometown, the day the circus came. They are also all, he said, about a series of goodbyes.
Hopkins’ voice, still deeply familiar as some of film’s most famous characters, including the serial killer Hannibal Lecter and the English butler, James Stevens, from “Remains of the Day,” now has a weathered rasp.
At his age, he’s “beginning to understand that from the moment we’re born we say goodbye — we say goodbye to the womb, say goodbye to childhood, going through adolescence, wonderful, goodbye to that. You reach a certain age, you think: this is it. It’s one long goodbye.”
The music on the new record is vivid in its storytelling and unapologetically emotional, lyrical and expressive. Languid piano tunes give way to surging, keening tides of strings. Hopkins weaves in old Welsh folk tunes and nods to impressionistic inspirations like Vaughan Williams and Frederick Delius. “Life Is a Dream” is, essentially, a collection of love letters: to his wife Stella, to Margam, to the life he knows won’t last forever.
Stella Hopkins — avidly praised by her husband for pushing him past his self-doubt and encouraging him to compose — reached out to Dudamel through their mutual friend, Bradley Cooper, and the busy conductor spent the Christmas holiday looking over the scores.
“From the first pages I felt something very genuine,” Dudamel wrote in an email. “There is honesty in this music. It comes from a place of deep feeling, and I immediately wanted to help bring it to life.”
Stephen Barton, the BAFTA-nominated British composer credited with “score preparation” on the album, noted that if classical fans think of the music as an actor’s vanity project, they should think again.
“Everything you hear is him, is his orchestration, his arrangement,” said Barton. who was introduced to Hopkins 20 years ago by composer Harry Gregson-Williams.
Like Fenton, Barton has lent his writing studio (located inside Abbey Road Studios) and sample software to Hopkins. “I would pull up an oboe sound, and he’d play it,” says Barton, “and it was sort of a childlike thing where he was just like, ‘Oh, this allows me to hear my ideas.’”
Dudamel — who opened the music up “like a bottle of wine,” said Hopkins — brought along pianist Sergio Tiempo and cellist Gregorio Nieto from Venezuela. Two large choirs also joined the orchestra at the sessions in April, which took place at Alexandra Palace in north London.
The final piece on the album, “Samsara,” is inspired by an ancient Mesopotamian fable about the inevitability of death. Hopkins said he is becoming more at peace with slowing down his hectic acting career, and of appreciating the time he’s been given. He’s also very glad for the opportunity to focus on his first love: music.
“These themes seem morbid,” he admitted, “but I think there is great solace in the stories because, after all the great life forces that drive us to make meaning and success of our existence, there on the distant hill we see the single lone figure who beckons us. It’s a form of prayer.”
Life begins as a fanfare — a regal entry heralded by brass — and ends as a solo cello lament and the serene acceptance of death as sung by a choir. Everything in between is a dream, at least according to Anthony Hopkins, composer of orchestral music.
The renowned actor has played piano his whole life, and formally written music for at least 30 years, but it might still surprise many to learn that later this month Hopkins will release his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” on Decca Classics. Featuring 12 tracks written over decades, the music was recorded by London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, the soon-to-depart music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Such an impressive classical pedigree belies the “gremlins of self-doubt” that have plagued Hopkins for much of his life.
“I’ve been walking around with a question mark over my head,” Hopkins, 88, said during a recent interview at the Hotel Bel-Air. “Maybe I suffer from impostor syndrome.”
It all started — both the music and the doubt — in childhood, when “Tony” was growing up in the Welsh suburb of Margam where his father was a tough, no-nonsense baker.
“In school, I was a complete idiot,” said Hopkins, sitting comfortably with a cup of tea and a plate of Fig Newtons. “Didn’t have a clue, you know. And that’s why people who are poor students sometimes become very successful — because they fight against the odds.”
He was hopeless at math and likely dyslexic, but said he was utterly transfixed by music. Hopkins remembers going backstage to get an autograph from the Spanish pianist José Iturbi when he played a concert in Cardiff, and discovering the beauty of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” at a show in Swansea. He also recalls first hearing a recording of Joan Hammond singing “O My Beloved Father” from Puccini’s opera, “Gianni Schicchi.”
With the release of his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” Anthony Hopkins is grateful he can take time to focus on his first true love: music.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“When I mention these pieces, they still cut straight through me,” Hopkins said. “As a boy, I’d start weeping. And boys don’t cry; I’d blubber. I couldn’t help it — it was like a knife going into me. And my father said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ So I started piano lessons.”
Hopkins kept playing, and even wrote little ditties on staff paper. In 1955 he applied to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, “hoping to become a musician.” But an impromptu audition with material from “Othello” suddenly swerved him into the acting profession — where he has done quite well.
Time marched on, and in 1996, when the two-time Oscar winner was directing his first feature, “August,” he asked composer George Fenton if he would score the film. Fenton, who had recently scored “Shadowlands,” in which Hopkins played the author C.S. Lewis, was overbooked, but knew Hopkins played piano and asked if he also composed.
“He said, ‘Play something. You write — I know you do. Come on, play something,’” Hopkins said, imitating the wince he gave Fenton at the time. “He said, ‘Why are you pulling a face? Just do it.”
Fenton set Hopkins up with a keyboard loaded with samples of every instrument, and an internal switch was flipped: now the actor could compose for orchestra.
“George said, ‘You have a real talent for music. You’re a musician.’ I said, ‘Am I?’ ‘Yeah! Don’t question it,’ he said. ‘You break all the rules. That’s pretty good.’”
Anthony Hopkins wanted to study music before a unexpected audition in college sent him off in the direction of acting.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“Margam,” a track on the new album, comes from that 1996 score. Most of these miniatures and tone poems were inspired by Hopkins’ childhood — his parents, his hometown, the day the circus came. They are also all, he said, about a series of goodbyes.
Hopkins’ voice, still deeply familiar as some of film’s most famous characters, including the serial killer Hannibal Lecter and the English butler, James Stevens, from “Remains of the Day,” now has a weathered rasp.
At his age, he’s “beginning to understand that from the moment we’re born we say goodbye — we say goodbye to the womb, say goodbye to childhood, going through adolescence, wonderful, goodbye to that. You reach a certain age, you think: this is it. It’s one long goodbye.”
The music on the new record is vivid in its storytelling and unapologetically emotional, lyrical and expressive. Languid piano tunes give way to surging, keening tides of strings. Hopkins weaves in old Welsh folk tunes and nods to impressionistic inspirations like Vaughan Williams and Frederick Delius. “Life Is a Dream” is, essentially, a collection of love letters: to his wife Stella, to Margam, to the life he knows won’t last forever.
Stella Hopkins — avidly praised by her husband for pushing him past his self-doubt and encouraging him to compose — reached out to Dudamel through their mutual friend, Bradley Cooper, and the busy conductor spent the Christmas holiday looking over the scores.
“From the first pages I felt something very genuine,” Dudamel wrote in an email. “There is honesty in this music. It comes from a place of deep feeling, and I immediately wanted to help bring it to life.”
Stephen Barton, the BAFTA-nominated British composer credited with “score preparation” on the album, noted that if classical fans think of the music as an actor’s vanity project, they should think again.
“Everything you hear is him, is his orchestration, his arrangement,” said Barton. who was introduced to Hopkins 20 years ago by composer Harry Gregson-Williams.
Like Fenton, Barton has lent his writing studio (located inside Abbey Road Studios) and sample software to Hopkins. “I would pull up an oboe sound, and he’d play it,” says Barton, “and it was sort of a childlike thing where he was just like, ‘Oh, this allows me to hear my ideas.’”
Dudamel — who opened the music up “like a bottle of wine,” said Hopkins — brought along pianist Sergio Tiempo and cellist Gregorio Nieto from Venezuela. Two large choirs also joined the orchestra at the sessions in April, which took place at Alexandra Palace in north London.
The final piece on the album, “Samsara,” is inspired by an ancient Mesopotamian fable about the inevitability of death. Hopkins said he is becoming more at peace with slowing down his hectic acting career, and of appreciating the time he’s been given. He’s also very glad for the opportunity to focus on his first love: music.
“These themes seem morbid,” he admitted, “but I think there is great solace in the stories because, after all the great life forces that drive us to make meaning and success of our existence, there on the distant hill we see the single lone figure who beckons us. It’s a form of prayer.”
Life begins as a fanfare — a regal entry heralded by brass — and ends as a solo cello lament and the serene acceptance of death as sung by a choir. Everything in between is a dream, at least according to Anthony Hopkins, composer of orchestral music.
The renowned actor has played piano his whole life, and formally written music for at least 30 years, but it might still surprise many to learn that later this month Hopkins will release his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” on Decca Classics. Featuring 12 tracks written over decades, the music was recorded by London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, the soon-to-depart music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Such an impressive classical pedigree belies the “gremlins of self-doubt” that have plagued Hopkins for much of his life.
“I’ve been walking around with a question mark over my head,” Hopkins, 88, said during a recent interview at the Hotel Bel-Air. “Maybe I suffer from impostor syndrome.”
It all started — both the music and the doubt — in childhood, when “Tony” was growing up in the Welsh suburb of Margam where his father was a tough, no-nonsense baker.
“In school, I was a complete idiot,” said Hopkins, sitting comfortably with a cup of tea and a plate of Fig Newtons. “Didn’t have a clue, you know. And that’s why people who are poor students sometimes become very successful — because they fight against the odds.”
He was hopeless at math and likely dyslexic, but said he was utterly transfixed by music. Hopkins remembers going backstage to get an autograph from the Spanish pianist José Iturbi when he played a concert in Cardiff, and discovering the beauty of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” at a show in Swansea. He also recalls first hearing a recording of Joan Hammond singing “O My Beloved Father” from Puccini’s opera, “Gianni Schicchi.”
With the release of his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” Anthony Hopkins is grateful he can take time to focus on his first true love: music.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“When I mention these pieces, they still cut straight through me,” Hopkins said. “As a boy, I’d start weeping. And boys don’t cry; I’d blubber. I couldn’t help it — it was like a knife going into me. And my father said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ So I started piano lessons.”
Hopkins kept playing, and even wrote little ditties on staff paper. In 1955 he applied to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, “hoping to become a musician.” But an impromptu audition with material from “Othello” suddenly swerved him into the acting profession — where he has done quite well.
Time marched on, and in 1996, when the two-time Oscar winner was directing his first feature, “August,” he asked composer George Fenton if he would score the film. Fenton, who had recently scored “Shadowlands,” in which Hopkins played the author C.S. Lewis, was overbooked, but knew Hopkins played piano and asked if he also composed.
“He said, ‘Play something. You write — I know you do. Come on, play something,’” Hopkins said, imitating the wince he gave Fenton at the time. “He said, ‘Why are you pulling a face? Just do it.”
Fenton set Hopkins up with a keyboard loaded with samples of every instrument, and an internal switch was flipped: now the actor could compose for orchestra.
“George said, ‘You have a real talent for music. You’re a musician.’ I said, ‘Am I?’ ‘Yeah! Don’t question it,’ he said. ‘You break all the rules. That’s pretty good.’”
Anthony Hopkins wanted to study music before a unexpected audition in college sent him off in the direction of acting.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“Margam,” a track on the new album, comes from that 1996 score. Most of these miniatures and tone poems were inspired by Hopkins’ childhood — his parents, his hometown, the day the circus came. They are also all, he said, about a series of goodbyes.
Hopkins’ voice, still deeply familiar as some of film’s most famous characters, including the serial killer Hannibal Lecter and the English butler, James Stevens, from “Remains of the Day,” now has a weathered rasp.
At his age, he’s “beginning to understand that from the moment we’re born we say goodbye — we say goodbye to the womb, say goodbye to childhood, going through adolescence, wonderful, goodbye to that. You reach a certain age, you think: this is it. It’s one long goodbye.”
The music on the new record is vivid in its storytelling and unapologetically emotional, lyrical and expressive. Languid piano tunes give way to surging, keening tides of strings. Hopkins weaves in old Welsh folk tunes and nods to impressionistic inspirations like Vaughan Williams and Frederick Delius. “Life Is a Dream” is, essentially, a collection of love letters: to his wife Stella, to Margam, to the life he knows won’t last forever.
Stella Hopkins — avidly praised by her husband for pushing him past his self-doubt and encouraging him to compose — reached out to Dudamel through their mutual friend, Bradley Cooper, and the busy conductor spent the Christmas holiday looking over the scores.
“From the first pages I felt something very genuine,” Dudamel wrote in an email. “There is honesty in this music. It comes from a place of deep feeling, and I immediately wanted to help bring it to life.”
Stephen Barton, the BAFTA-nominated British composer credited with “score preparation” on the album, noted that if classical fans think of the music as an actor’s vanity project, they should think again.
“Everything you hear is him, is his orchestration, his arrangement,” said Barton. who was introduced to Hopkins 20 years ago by composer Harry Gregson-Williams.
Like Fenton, Barton has lent his writing studio (located inside Abbey Road Studios) and sample software to Hopkins. “I would pull up an oboe sound, and he’d play it,” says Barton, “and it was sort of a childlike thing where he was just like, ‘Oh, this allows me to hear my ideas.’”
Dudamel — who opened the music up “like a bottle of wine,” said Hopkins — brought along pianist Sergio Tiempo and cellist Gregorio Nieto from Venezuela. Two large choirs also joined the orchestra at the sessions in April, which took place at Alexandra Palace in north London.
The final piece on the album, “Samsara,” is inspired by an ancient Mesopotamian fable about the inevitability of death. Hopkins said he is becoming more at peace with slowing down his hectic acting career, and of appreciating the time he’s been given. He’s also very glad for the opportunity to focus on his first love: music.
“These themes seem morbid,” he admitted, “but I think there is great solace in the stories because, after all the great life forces that drive us to make meaning and success of our existence, there on the distant hill we see the single lone figure who beckons us. It’s a form of prayer.”
Life begins as a fanfare — a regal entry heralded by brass — and ends as a solo cello lament and the serene acceptance of death as sung by a choir. Everything in between is a dream, at least according to Anthony Hopkins, composer of orchestral music.
The renowned actor has played piano his whole life, and formally written music for at least 30 years, but it might still surprise many to learn that later this month Hopkins will release his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” on Decca Classics. Featuring 12 tracks written over decades, the music was recorded by London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, the soon-to-depart music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Such an impressive classical pedigree belies the “gremlins of self-doubt” that have plagued Hopkins for much of his life.
“I’ve been walking around with a question mark over my head,” Hopkins, 88, said during a recent interview at the Hotel Bel-Air. “Maybe I suffer from impostor syndrome.”
It all started — both the music and the doubt — in childhood, when “Tony” was growing up in the Welsh suburb of Margam where his father was a tough, no-nonsense baker.
“In school, I was a complete idiot,” said Hopkins, sitting comfortably with a cup of tea and a plate of Fig Newtons. “Didn’t have a clue, you know. And that’s why people who are poor students sometimes become very successful — because they fight against the odds.”
He was hopeless at math and likely dyslexic, but said he was utterly transfixed by music. Hopkins remembers going backstage to get an autograph from the Spanish pianist José Iturbi when he played a concert in Cardiff, and discovering the beauty of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” at a show in Swansea. He also recalls first hearing a recording of Joan Hammond singing “O My Beloved Father” from Puccini’s opera, “Gianni Schicchi.”
With the release of his debut album, “Life Is a Dream,” Anthony Hopkins is grateful he can take time to focus on his first true love: music.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“When I mention these pieces, they still cut straight through me,” Hopkins said. “As a boy, I’d start weeping. And boys don’t cry; I’d blubber. I couldn’t help it — it was like a knife going into me. And my father said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ So I started piano lessons.”
Hopkins kept playing, and even wrote little ditties on staff paper. In 1955 he applied to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, “hoping to become a musician.” But an impromptu audition with material from “Othello” suddenly swerved him into the acting profession — where he has done quite well.
Time marched on, and in 1996, when the two-time Oscar winner was directing his first feature, “August,” he asked composer George Fenton if he would score the film. Fenton, who had recently scored “Shadowlands,” in which Hopkins played the author C.S. Lewis, was overbooked, but knew Hopkins played piano and asked if he also composed.
“He said, ‘Play something. You write — I know you do. Come on, play something,’” Hopkins said, imitating the wince he gave Fenton at the time. “He said, ‘Why are you pulling a face? Just do it.”
Fenton set Hopkins up with a keyboard loaded with samples of every instrument, and an internal switch was flipped: now the actor could compose for orchestra.
“George said, ‘You have a real talent for music. You’re a musician.’ I said, ‘Am I?’ ‘Yeah! Don’t question it,’ he said. ‘You break all the rules. That’s pretty good.’”
Anthony Hopkins wanted to study music before a unexpected audition in college sent him off in the direction of acting.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“Margam,” a track on the new album, comes from that 1996 score. Most of these miniatures and tone poems were inspired by Hopkins’ childhood — his parents, his hometown, the day the circus came. They are also all, he said, about a series of goodbyes.
Hopkins’ voice, still deeply familiar as some of film’s most famous characters, including the serial killer Hannibal Lecter and the English butler, James Stevens, from “Remains of the Day,” now has a weathered rasp.
At his age, he’s “beginning to understand that from the moment we’re born we say goodbye — we say goodbye to the womb, say goodbye to childhood, going through adolescence, wonderful, goodbye to that. You reach a certain age, you think: this is it. It’s one long goodbye.”
The music on the new record is vivid in its storytelling and unapologetically emotional, lyrical and expressive. Languid piano tunes give way to surging, keening tides of strings. Hopkins weaves in old Welsh folk tunes and nods to impressionistic inspirations like Vaughan Williams and Frederick Delius. “Life Is a Dream” is, essentially, a collection of love letters: to his wife Stella, to Margam, to the life he knows won’t last forever.
Stella Hopkins — avidly praised by her husband for pushing him past his self-doubt and encouraging him to compose — reached out to Dudamel through their mutual friend, Bradley Cooper, and the busy conductor spent the Christmas holiday looking over the scores.
“From the first pages I felt something very genuine,” Dudamel wrote in an email. “There is honesty in this music. It comes from a place of deep feeling, and I immediately wanted to help bring it to life.”
Stephen Barton, the BAFTA-nominated British composer credited with “score preparation” on the album, noted that if classical fans think of the music as an actor’s vanity project, they should think again.
“Everything you hear is him, is his orchestration, his arrangement,” said Barton. who was introduced to Hopkins 20 years ago by composer Harry Gregson-Williams.
Like Fenton, Barton has lent his writing studio (located inside Abbey Road Studios) and sample software to Hopkins. “I would pull up an oboe sound, and he’d play it,” says Barton, “and it was sort of a childlike thing where he was just like, ‘Oh, this allows me to hear my ideas.’”
Dudamel — who opened the music up “like a bottle of wine,” said Hopkins — brought along pianist Sergio Tiempo and cellist Gregorio Nieto from Venezuela. Two large choirs also joined the orchestra at the sessions in April, which took place at Alexandra Palace in north London.
The final piece on the album, “Samsara,” is inspired by an ancient Mesopotamian fable about the inevitability of death. Hopkins said he is becoming more at peace with slowing down his hectic acting career, and of appreciating the time he’s been given. He’s also very glad for the opportunity to focus on his first love: music.
“These themes seem morbid,” he admitted, “but I think there is great solace in the stories because, after all the great life forces that drive us to make meaning and success of our existence, there on the distant hill we see the single lone figure who beckons us. It’s a form of prayer.”
