Anthony Hopkins signs Decca Classics deal, classical album set for August release

A lifetime of composing

The release builds on a body of musical work that stretches back decades. Hopkins released the single 'Distant Star' in 1986 and more recently put out 'Composer', an album of his own compositions. He began playing the piano at the age of four and has continued to compose throughout his acting career, treating music as a parallel creative life rather than a sideline.

The label itself framed the signing in unusually warm terms. Decca President Laura Monks said: "Seine immense Begabung und sein über ein Leben lang verfeinertes Wissen über klassische Musik sind eine wahre Freude, die wir mit diesem neuen Album feiern." Decca Classics is regarded as one of the most renowned classical music labels, and the partnership gives Hopkins's work a prominent international platform."'Life Is A Dream' is scheduled for release on August 21. The choice of Dudamel and the London Philharmonia Orchestra signals an ambition to reach a wide classical audience rather than a niche curiosity release, and the tracks — built around Welsh childhood imagery — are presented as a personal as well as a musical statement.

Decca's framing of the deal

Hopkins was born in the industrial town of Port Talbot in South Wales, a landscape he has revisited repeatedly in interviews and now apparently in music. The album's reference to dreams and his home region suggests the composer is using the project to map an interior geography that runs alongside his screen career, one that stretches from his first piano lessons as a child to a major-label release in his ninth decade.

His screen career has long made him one of the most recognised performers of his generation. Hopkins won an Oscar in 1992 for his portrayal of the psychopathic Hannibal Lecter in 'The Silence of the Lambs' and received his second Academy Award in 2021 for his lead role in the family drama 'The Father'. The two Oscars bracket a career that has, until now, kept his composing life largely in the background.

An actor who never stopped writing music

For Decca, the deal extends a label tradition of working with cultural figures outside the classical mainstream. Pairing a globally known actor-composer with Dudamel and the Philharmonia gives the release both a personal story and an orchestral weight unusual for a debut of this kind, and positions Hopkins alongside other crossover signings the label has pursued in recent years.

PA reported the signing and release plans, and the news has since been carried widely. The collaboration is being presented not as a celebrity vanity project but as a serious entry into the classical catalogue — one that Hopkins, by his own account, has been quietly preparing for most of his life.