Actor and writer Alan Hopgood has died following a long battle with prostate cancer. He was 87.
Hopgood was known for his work as an actor, writer and producer with the Melbourne Theatre Company, for whom he wrote plays And The Big Men Fly and The Golden Legion Of Cleaning Women during the ’60s.
He was a consistent presence in film and television for more than four decades, winning AWGIE awards for TV movies The Cheerful Cuckold and The Bush Bunch, and writing several feature films, including Alvin Purple and documentaries The Prophecies Of Nostradamus and The Fountain Of Youth.
In front of the screen, he starred as Dr. Reed in more than 850 episodes of ’70s drama Bellbird, before going to play Wally Wallace in Prisoner during the early ’80s.
Hopgood continued to appear across a range of titles throughout the ’90s and early 2000s, during which he was also able to showcase his talent as an episodic writer via Pugwall and The Flying Doctors.
His final screen role was as Jack Lassiter in Neighbours, where he also wrote more than 20 episodes.
The actor, writer and producer died in a hospital in Melbourne on Saturday, succumbing to a cancer he was first diagnosed with at age 59.
Hopgood is survived by his wife Gay, son Sam, daughter Fincina, and four grandsons.
In a statement on social media, Sam Hopgood, a senior audio engineer at Melbourne’s Bang Bang Studios, spoke of his father’s “kindness, love, and wisdom”.
“Dad always had a knack for writing the perfect message for every occasion, a talent that seems to have evaded me, so I’m finding it hard to properly express how amazing he was as a father,” he wrote.
“Thank you for your kindness, love and wisdom and for showing me the beauty, joy, and value of creativity and the arts. I am forever grateful for everything you did for me and will miss you always.”
Others to pay tribute included Catherine Crock, chair and founder of the Hush Foundation, an organisation that aims to use the arts to improve the environment for patients, families and professionals in the healthcare system.
She said Hopgood, who wrote three plays for Hush, had made a “transformative contribution” to the work they do.
“It has been a privilege to have Alan as our Hush patron,” she wrote.
“We will be forever grateful for Alan’s unwavering support of Hush and the wisdom he imparted. Transforming healthcare culture with kindness and the arts has been our shared dream.
“Our thoughts are with Gay and the family in this time, knowing this remarkable and gifted man is very much loved, and knowing his collection of creative works, his legacy, live on.”