When music is just for old people. Hopkins and the others

What is it like to spend a lifetime imagining music even before playing it? In "Hannibal", with the unsettling calm of cinema’s most famous cannibal, Anthony Hopkins ran his fingers across the piano keys, playing Johann Sebastian Bach’s "Goldberg Variations". In "The Father", however, he listened to the music of Georges Bizet through his headphones, just as dementia was beginning to rob him of his memories.

For most of his life, Hopkins kept his work as a composer separate from his acting career, far from the Hollywood spotlight and the Oscars. He has now decided to bring it to the fore. “Life Is a Dream” is his first album: twelve compositions spanning more than sixty years, recorded at Alexandra Palace in London and performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. A debut at the age of 88, when, at least by show business standards, there should be nothing left to start. 

“My first love is music. I started playing the piano when I was very young,” said Hopkins. In 1960, aged 22, he wrote his first waltz, “And the Waltz Goes On”. “Music gives me freedom, unlike acting, which is a discipline where you have to know your stuff. For me, music is a carefree art form,” he emphasised.

When you’re nearly ninety, have two Oscars on your shelf and a life that’s now part of cinema history, you no longer need to turn a passion into a career. In an entertainment industry increasingly obsessed with youth, TikTok metrics, Spotify algorithms and the search for the next artist to launch, there’s something surprisingly liberating about starting late. There are no charts to climb, no audience to win over, and no image to build. There’s nothing left to prove. And perhaps that’s precisely why music can go back to being what it was in the beginning: a game, a curiosity, something you do because you simply can’t help yourself. Hopkins is no isolated case. The history of show business is full of men who, having reached old age, have decided to treat themselves to a detour.

Take Sir Christopher Lee, for example. A British actor who played Dracula in a long series of films, at one point in his life he took up heavy metal. In 2010, he released “Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross”. Three years later, at the age of 91, came “Jingle Hell”, a heavy metal version of “Jingle Bells” which reached number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Lee thus became the oldest living artist to have reached the US Top 20. At that age, whilst the world might have simply celebrated him as a legend, he was standing in front of a microphone singing. It’s hard to imagine a more enjoyable way to grow old.

William Shatner also took a similar path. After travelling the galaxies as Captain Kirk in Star Trek, he enjoyed a second career in music. In fact, he had already recorded an album in 1968, "The Transformed Man", on which he performed songs by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Then, for more than thirty years, silence. In 2004, aged 73, he made a comeback with "Has Been", produced by Ben Folds. It also featured Pulp’s “Common People”. In 2011, aged 80, he released “Seeking Major Tom”, a double album of space-themed covers with a line-up of guest musicians including Brian May, Ritchie Blackmore, Peter Frampton, Steve Howe, Zakk Wylde and Bootsy Collins. At that age, whilst anyone else might have been content to be a has-been, Shatner set about reinterpreting Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man”.

David Lynch took yet another different path. In 2011, at the age of 65, he released “Crazy Clown Time”, his first solo album: distorted blues, electronica, ambient sounds and those unsettling atmospheres that seem to have come straight out of Twin Peaks or Mulholland Drive. Lynch had already worked in music, including with John Neff on the BlueBOB project.

Then there is Jeff Goldblum, who is perhaps the most intriguing case of all. In 2018, at the age of 65, he released “The Capitol Studio Sessions”, his first official album, alongside the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. It would be wrong to describe him as an actor who, at some point, decided to become a musician. Goldblum had been playing the piano since he was a boy and, at the age of 15, was performing in clubs in Pittsburgh. Music had always been a part of his life; it simply hadn’t become his profession. Then, following a performance with Gregory Porter on the Graham Norton Show, an offer came in from Decca. And so Goldblum stopped keeping jazz separate from the rest of his life. 

Clint Eastwood has done yet another thing. Jazz has been a constant companion throughout his life and, over time, has become an increasingly integral part of his films. Eastwood composed the scores for "Mystic River", "Million Dollar Baby" and several of his other films. The jazz piano has almost become a second voice in his direction: a few notes, often melancholic, without the need for excessive explanation. Finally, there is Christopher Walken, who has been involved in music without ever recording an album. In 2001, aged 58, he starred in Fatboy Slim’s ‘Weapon of Choice’ music video, directed by Spike Jonze, in which he dances alone in a deserted hotel, eventually ending up – quite literally – flying. Walken had been a stage dancer before becoming an actor and also contributed to the choreography. The clip won six MTV Video Music Awards and a Grammy for Best Music Video.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that this gallery features only men. There are countless actresses and female artists who have also ventured into music, from Juliette Gréco to Debbie Reynolds. For them, however, their relationship with music was often an integral part of their career right from the start. Here, by contrast, the common thread linking Hopkins, Lee, Shatner, Lynch, Goldblum, Eastwood and, in a different way, Walken is precisely the idea of a passion that originates elsewhere and, at a certain point in life, finally takes centre stage.

The common thread running through this gallery of “terrible old men” is not nostalgia, but a total disregard for the conventions of the present. Far removed from meticulously planned stadium tours, synchronised TikTok dances and the chase for the next big hit, their forays into music remind us that inspiration has no expiry date. And that at 70, 80 or 90, when you no longer have anything to prove, music remains a realm where you can be authentically and ruthlessly free.