Harold Hopkins (actor)

Harold Douglas Hopkins (6 March 1944 – 11 December 2011) was an Australian film and television actor.

Hopkins was born in 1944 in Toowoomba, Queensland.^[1] He attended Toowoomba Grammar School as a day boy in 1958 and 1959. During the 1960s, he worked as an apprentice carpenter, and was exposed to asbestos fibres without protective masks or clothing.^[2] He and his twin brother John enrolled at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney, with Harold graduating in 1967.^[3]

Harold Hopkins married twice. His second marriage was to Sue Collie, an actress he met in Melbourne in 1977, while starring in the original stage production of David Williamson's The Club at the MTC.

Hopkins appeared in 16 films over the course of his career, including classic Australian films Don's Party, The Picture Show Man and Gallipoli. He was nominated for an Australian Film Institute Award in 1981 for his supporting role in The Club. Hopkins also appeared in more than 160 episodes of Australian television series such as Barrier Reef, Homicide, The Godfathers, Twenty Good Years, Sara Dane, A Nice Little Earner and Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities.^[4] He also had a major co-starring role opposite Jeanie Drynan in the 1969 ABC drama Pastures of the Blue Crane.

Hopkins' last audition was for a role in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, although he knew he would not live to play the role.

He won a Penguin Award in 1974 for his portrayal of Percy Deane in John Power's docudrama Billy and Percy.

In 2011, Hopkins was diagnosed with mesothelioma, believed to be due to his asbestos exposure in the 1960s. He died in a Sydney hospice in Wahroonga on 11 December 2011.^[2]

• Harold Hopkins at IMDb