Career
A native of Pasadena, California, Hopkins got his start designing scenery on stage after studying design in college. He moved to films in 1917, working as an art director for various studios. During his long career, Hopkins had been nominated for the thirteen
Hopkins had a professional and intimate relationship with silent film director William Desmond Taylor, whose unsolved murder was one of early Hollywood"s biggest scandals.
On the 1922 morning that Taylor"s body was found, Charles Eyton instructed Hopkins to remove a basket of documents from the murder scene, and Hopkins obeyed.
Hopkins" unpublished 1981 autobiography, Caught in the Acting, was used as a major source for Charles Higham"s book on the Taylor murder.