Career
Born in 1933 at Carnmoney, a district of the modern-day borough of Newtownabbey in Northern Ireland, Cooper is most famous for appearing in the 1967 film, Casino Royale, a James Bond satire based on Ian Fleming"s first Bond novel of the same name. He was also at one point a candidate for the role of Bond in the official movie series. He was also famed as a water color artist.
He retired in Far North Queensland, Australia where he painted a collection of water colors depicting Australian tropical rain forests and birdlife.
At the time, Cooper ran a successful Curry restaurant in Auckland, New Zealand, Trouper Cooper"s Curry House. He also wrote The Parnell Cookbook, and starred in many New Zealand television series such as Hunter"s Gold (1977), Gather Your Dreams (1978), Children of Fire Mountain (1979), and Mortimer"s Patch (1982).
Cooper played the part of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle"s bombastic character "Professor George Edward Challenger" in a 1982 New Zealand radio dramatization of Doyle"s novel "The Lost World" (produced by Peggy Wells and Barry Campbell).