Anthony Hopkins’ heartbreaking wish at 88: ‘Time is running out’

While Sir Anthony Hopkins has lived in America for decades, having become a US citizen in 2000 after achieving extraordinary success in Hollywood, he still thinks about his native Wales daily and fears time is running out for him to return.

During an interview with ITV News about the release of his first album in August, the 88-year-old actor revealed he often finds himself searching his old neighbourhood in Port Talbot on Google Maps. 

“I go to streets and move up the street, the photographs of my streets in Wales… I’m always going back there,” said the two-time Oscar winner, who eventually settled in Los Angeles after his film career took him away from the UK.

“I haven’t been there for two years, but I love going back there,” said the actor. “There’s no time really. Time is running out,” continued the acclaimed star. 

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“I wish I could just get out and walk around but I’m getting a bit too old for that.

“But I’m always going back there… most days I’m back there somehow.”

Anthony Hopkins’ first music album

Anthony’s first album, released in August, is a collection of pieces he has worked on for six decades.

Titled Life Is A Dream, Anthony’s compositions draw on childhood memories growing up in Port Talbot, Wales. The actor, who studied at Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff, has composed music since his childhood, and began playing the piano at the age of four.

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The first single, Bracken Road, is inspired by his childhood memories of Margam in south Wales and the streets, meadows, farmland and mountains that surrounded his family home in the 1940s.

Anthony said: “Music was my first desire, my first wish, I’ve been composing music all my life.

“Some of these pieces have lived with me for decades and I still find myself returning to them. My whole life is a dream. Signing with Decca is the honour of a lifetime.”

Anthony’s life in Hollywood 

Anthony moved to the US in the 1970s to pursue a career in acting.

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“When I became an actor my dream was to come here to Hollywood,” Anthony said while receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003. “This is synonymous with the dreamland of the movie business, and that’s where I always wanted to come.”

In 2001, he bought a property in Malibu that he ended up selling in 2020. He then moved into a home in the Pacific Palisades, which burned down in the Californian wildfires in January 2025.