Ellen Miriam Hopkins (October 18, 1902 – October 9, 1972) was an Oscar-nominated American actress.
Born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Bainbridge, a town in southwestern Georgia near the Alabama border, Hopkins attended a finishing school in Vermont and later Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. At the age of 20, she became a chorus girl in New York City. In 1930, she signed with Paramount Pictures, and made her official film debut in Fast and Loose.
Her first great success was in Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece Trouble in Paradise (1932), in which she proved her charm and her wit as a beautiful and jealous pickpocket. During the rest of the 1930s she appeared in such films as The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Becky Sharp (1935), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, Barbary Coast (1935), These Three (1936) and The Old Maid (1939). Hopkins rejected the role of Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night (1934.
Hopkins had well-publicized fights with her arch-enemy Bette Davis (who had an affair with Hopkins’s then husband, Anatole Litvak), when they co-starred in their two films The Old Maid (1939) and Old Acquaintance (1943). One of the scenes in Old Acquaintance which Davis admitted to enjoying very much was one where she shakes Hopkins hard. There were even press photos taken with both divas in boxing rings with gloves up and director Vincent Sherman between the two.
After Old Acquaintance she didn't work again in film until 1949's The Heiress. In Mitchell Leisen's 1951's classic screwball comedy The Mating Season she gave a comic performance as Gene Tierney's over the top mother, Thelma Ritter also co-starred as Tierney's maid-mother in law.
Hopkins was one of the actresses who auditioned to portray Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, having one advantage that no other leading lady had: she was a native Georgian; however she did not get the part, which went to Vivien Leigh, with Paulette Goddard close behind.
in the film Becky Sharp (1935)
Hopkins was married and divorced four times: first to actor Brandon Peters, second to aviator Austin Parker, third to the director Anatole Litvak, and fourth to war correspondent Raymond B. Brock. In 1932, Hopkins adopted a son, Michael Hopkins.
Hopkins died in New York, New York from a heart attack nine days before her 70th birthday.
She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one for motion pictures at 1701 Vine Street, and one for television at 1708 Vine Street.
