Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins has unveiled plans to embark on a major world tour - as a concert pianist. The Welsh actor has revealed a secret passion for piano and hopes to showcase his talents in a series of concerts, to be performed in cities across the world, kicking of in Melbourne, Australia.

The shows will see the Beowulf star live out a life-long dream of playing classical pieces accompanied by an orchestra, with stories narrated over the music.

Hopkins - who has starred in more than 70 movies - will also use the music tour to tell anecdotes from his film career.

The project is being planned with the British musician and film-score mixer, Malcolm Luker, who met the actor when he was working on the score for Hopkins' latest experimental film, Slipstream.

Luker says, "I think people will be surprised by (Anthony's) talents. He's a great pianist and an incredibly pleasant and softly spoken man. It's going to happen either next year or early 2009 but at the moment we're doing the preliminaries of checking timing, availability and venues."

This is not the first time he has found time to immerse himself in music; in 1986 Hopkins released a critically-panned single called Distant Star - which reached a dismal number 75 in the U.K. charts.