BO HOPKINS

(1942. Born William Hopkins, Greenville, South Carolina)

The Culpepper Cattle Company

Fair-haired, blue-eyed character actor and Peckinpah acolyte with pronounced Southern drawl and disarming grin, much exercised in the playing of likeable outlaws and rustic reprobates. Made a vital contribution – with such alumni as Luke Askew, Geoffrey Lewis and Matt Clark – to the western’s grubbily naturalistic makeover in the Seventies.

With David Chung in The Ballad of Little Jo

A wayward youngster (aged nine he lost his adoptive father; subsequently had a spell in reform school), he enlisted in the army at 16. Saw service in Korea. Briefly married in his late teens. Set his heart on acting, moving to New York for its theatre scene and then to Hollywood to further his ambitions. Learnt the trade at the Desilu Playhouse.

The Wild Bunch

After bit parts and TV spots, he blasted his way onto the big screen in The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah’s gamble on this 24-year-old rookie paid off – nobody forgets his scenes as Crazy Lee, the slack-jawed slayer of innocent civilians who holds the fort while his comrades flee Starbuck. The director retained his services for The Getaway, as a none-too-smart bank robber, and The Killer Elite, as a trigger-happy merc – “the patron poet of the manic depressives”. 

White Lightning

Vivid turns in revisionist westerns (Monte Walsh, Culpepper Cattle Company, Posse) were interspersed with good ol’ boys in hicksploitation flicks (The Moonshine War, White Lightning) and supporting slots in more serious fare (The Day of the Locust, Midnight Express). As the roguish leader of the Pharaohs in George Lucas’s wistful American Graffiti, he crafted another of his signature roles.

With Al Lettieri in The Getaway

After all those outlaws and lowlifes he was rehabilitated by casting agents in his middle years, essaying numerous lawmen and authority figures. Fondly remembered by TV fans for a recurring role on The Rockford Files and 16 episodes of Dynasty, in course of which his character enjoyed a fling with Krystle Jennings, had a breakdown and took the Carringtons hostage. 

With Bruce Dern in Posse

Still active in features and on stage, and a popular guest on the convention circuit. 

Despite the variety of his roles and the subtlety and range of his skills, it is his gallery of trigger men and shitkickers with which he remains synonymous. It could be worse. “When you come out of a movie, who do you remember?” he asked one interviewer. “I would remember the bad guy.”

With James Caan in The Killer Elite

Five standout roles

As Crazy Lee in The Wild Bunch, he burns up the screen with manic adolescent energy, shooting hostages with no more compunction than he would turkeys. Cornered, bullet-riddled, he fires off an immortal riposte – “How’d you like to kiss my sister’s black cat’s ass?” – taking three more bounty hunters with him before he dies.

With Geoffrey Lewis

As gunhand Dixie Brick in The Culpepper Cattle Company, he imparts a residual sense of childlike glee – beating his fists on a table after a barroom shootout, eyes gleaming with excitement, conveys both the adrenaline rush of violence and an amoral indifference towards the taking of life.

As Joe in American Graffiti, he wryly interprets a dime-store tough guy with delusions of criminal grandeur, he and his two-bit sidekicks inveigling young graduate Richard Dreyfuss into a petty and pointless crime spree. 

As Miller in The Killer Elite, he describes a laid-back, mild-mannered psychopath, eschewing the wild-eyed mannerisms he had employed for Crazy Lee. Boyish in his demeanour, relaxed in the face of danger – this is quintessential Hopkins.

As Frank Badger in The Ballad of Little Jo, he projects gruff, grizzled machismo (with just the hint of a soft centre) as a rowdy rancher taken in by the title character’s ruse – a woman pretending to be a man in the paternalistic old West. An unsavoury but lucid and textured characterisation. Kevin Grant