At age 15, Hootkins found himself caught up in the FBI's investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy when he was interviewed about Ruth Paine, his Russian teacher.

[2] He portrayed Fatty Arbuckle in Ken Russell's infamous 1977 flop Valentino, and played Hans Zarkov's assistant in the 1980 Flash Gordon.

Although American, he was a close look-alike to portray the young Winston Churchill through to his premiership in six episodes of the 1981 BBC Cymru Wales biographical series The Life and Times of David Lloyd George.

[1] Hootkins was also a voice artist, recording dozens of plays for BBC Radio Drama where his roles ranged from J. Edgar Hoover[3] and Orson Welles[4] to Winston Churchill.

[citation needed] In audio books, he read works by Jack London, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Robert Bloch and Carl Hiaasen.

[5] He voiced Dingodile in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, Maximillian Roivas in the cult hit Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, and Lucifer in the stop-motion film The Miracle Maker.