Born in southwest London, England, Hopkins was educated at Raynes Park County Grammar School, then completed his National Service in the Army from 1950 to 1951.
He read English Literature at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and joined BBC Television as a studio manager on graduation.
Starring Dench, and Michael Bryant, as the adult children of characters played by Maurice Denham, and Margery Mason, Talking to a Stranger was transmitted as part of BBC2's Theatre 625 anthology series.
[7] The former imagines an inverted South African apartheid in Britain[6] (which was postponed by the BBC in case it affected a by-election),[4] while the latter is a rare exploration of homosexuality in the 1960s.
[9] Hopkins made his feature film debut with the screenplay he co-wrote with director Roy Ward Baker Two Left Feet (1963), a lightweight comedy-drama with Michael Crawford.
Hopkins' plays for the stage included Next of Kin, which was produced at London's National Theatre in 1974 with Harold Pinter directing.
[4] His later television work also includes the Play for Today A Story to Frighten the Children (1976), and the serial adaptation of John le Carré's novel Smiley's People (1982), starring Alec Guinness, both for the BBC; and the Cold War espionage thriller Codename: Kyril (1988) for ITV.
[13] Hopkins died at his home in Woodland Hills, California, United States, in July 1998, following an accident in which he slipped, hit his head and fell unconscious into his swimming-pool, where he drowned.