The album is a collection of pieces the Oscar-winning actor has worked on for more than 60 years.

Sir Anthony Hopkins will release his first album next month featuring a collection of classical pieces he has worked on for six decades. The Oscar-winning actor said he had been composing music "all my life", and that "music was my first desire, my first wish". The first single from the 88-year-old's album, titled Life Is A Dream, was released on Friday, and was inspired by his childhood memories of Margam in south Wales. The Port Talbot-born star, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, has written his own music since childhood, and began playing the piano at the age of four. The single, Bracken Road from Hopkins' 1947: Suite For Solo Piano And Orchestra, was influenced by the streets, meadows, farmland and mountains that surrounded the star's family home in the 1940s. Sir Anthony composed the music in 1963 when he was a young actor at the Liverpool Playhouse. "Some of these pieces have lived with me for decades and I still find myself returning to them," Sir Anthony said. "My whole life is a dream," he added, describing signing with the Decca Classics record label as "the honour of a lifetime".