Acting world mourns Harold Hopkins

HAROLD Hopkins, famous for his roles in classic Australian films Don's Party, The Club and Gallipoli, was a lovable eccentric.

HAROLD Hopkins, famous for his roles in classic Australian films Don's Party, The Club and Gallipoli, was a lovable eccentric who will be remembered for the gritty, laconic characters he played on stage and screen.

Hopkins died yesterday morning, aged 67, of the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma, at a Wahroonga hospice on Sydney's north shore.

Film director Bruce Beresford, a close friend, said the Australian acting fraternity had lost one its best.

"He had this charisma . . . I always thought he'd be a huge star. He was just a great actor," he told The Australian from India.

"As a director, you work with a lot of people, but you don't always become great friends. We were great mates."

Hopkins reportedly contracted the respiratory disease while removing asbestos sheeting from homes in southeast Queensland when he worked as an apprentice carpenter after leaving school in the early 1960s.

Best known for his role as the foul-mouthed uber-ocker Cooley in Beresford's 1976 screen adaptation of David Williamson's classic play Don's Party, Hopkins was accepted into Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Arts in the mid-60s.

After graduating in 1967, he developed a reputation for playing laconic, gritty characters, starring as Barney in Rodney Fisher's Sydney Opera House production of Ray Lawler's Doll trilogy and famously as Cooley in Beresford's film.

He won rave reviews for his role as the footy captain in Beresford's film version of The Club and as battlefield bully Les McCann alongside Mel Gibson in Peter Weir's Gallipoli.

He continued to take small roles in film and stage, but recently had felt shut out by the industry, Beresford said.

"I would make calls to casting agents and directors, saying 'Don't forget Harold Hopkins. He's a great actor'," said Beresford. "But he did feel a little shunned from the film world."

Hopkins lived alone in an "architectural marvel" he built himself near Wisemans Ferry, north of Sydney, and was known for his gruelling health regime.

"I remember for a while there, all he was eating was carrots," Beresford said, laughing. "He was very health conscious."

Actor Graeme Blundell, who worked with Hopkins on Don's Party, remembered him as a quiet, self-effacing professional: "He was the fittest actor I ever worked with. He lived on a diet of nuts and fruit and sometimes slept in his ute on location. There aren't many actors like him left."

But Beresford said Hopkins's personal eccentricities were his professional strength.

"On stage or on screen, he was charming, and very, very sure of himself. In real life he wasn't like that at all. Cooley (in Don's Party) was an extrovert -- Harold was the opposite . . . That's the mark of a good actor."

Hopkins is survived by by his twin John and siblings Michael, Naomi, Gregory, Margaret and Suzanne.