IT WAS just a scribble on a piece of scrap paper – a melody sketched out by a young Anthony Hopkins in between rehearsals at the Liverpool Playhouse.

While he himself would go on to become one the most lauded actors of his generation, winning a Best Actor Academy Award and three other Oscar nominations, his composition would be ignored for many years.

On Monday, at the age of 74, he releases his first classical album. Composer, a collection of his works performed by the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at a concert in Cardiff last summer, includes a piece written in the Playhouse’s green room.

“I would always write little bits here and there,” says the Welsh actor, who worked under artistic director David Scase in plays including Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World before moving to the National Theatre.

“I’d incorporate things I’d written into well-known pieces and play them when I could.

“Some of the music performed at the concert goes back years, too.

“The waltz (And The Waltz Goes On), for example, I wrote in November, 1964. I was in a play at the Liverpool Playhouse and would go in early to sit at the piano in the green room. Between shows I’d work on my music. Eventually, I put a lyric to that waltz, and a title, but I thought better of it and just left it at that.