John Hopkins Biography (1931-1998)



See index for CTFT sketch: Born January 27, 1931, in London, England;died of a head injury resulting from a fall, July 23, 1998, in Woodland Hills, CA. Screenwriter, playwright, and writer for television. Hopkins was best known for his writings for television, including the British series Z Cars, for which he received a 1963 British Screenwriters' Guild Award, and thecable television movie Hiroshima, for which he was honored with the Humanitas Award and the 1996 PEN Center West literary award. He began writingfor television in the early 1960s, when he was asked to write an episode of Z Cars; he went on to write fifty-seven episodes for that popular police drama, which was praised for its realism. Hopkins composed more than one hundred original and adapted scripts for television throughout his career, including the four-part drama Talking to a Stranger, which aired in the late 1960s and was critically acclaimed for its originality, and his well-received adaptation of a 1980 John Le Carre novel, Smiley's People, which aired as a British television series in 1982. In 1970 Hopkins married Americanactress Shirley Knight, and moved to the United States. In addition to his works for television, Hopkins authored a number of stage plays produced in England and the United States, including This Story of Yours, Find Your Way Home, and Losing Time. His credits as a co-author of screenplays include the 1965 film Thunderball, an adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel on which he collaborated with Richard Maibaum, 1972's Divorce--His, Divorce--Hers, and The Offence, a 1973 film starring actor SeanConnery.

Gender
Male
Birth Details
January 27, 1931
London, England
Death Details
July 23, 1998
Woodland Hills, California, United States

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