Abigail Hopkins
Singer-Songwriter and Actress
Abigail Rhiannedd Hopkins was born on 20 August 1968 in Putney, London, the daughter of Sir Anthony Hopkins - the Port Talbot-born actor through whom her own Welsh connection comes - and the actress Petronella Barker. Her parents divorced in 1972, when Abigail was still a young child, and her relationship with her father would later become strained for many years before an eventual reconciliation.
She trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York and has worked as an actress, singer-songwriter and theatre director. She began playing classical guitar at the age of seven, and went on to release three albums and an EP as a recording artist: Smile Road (2002, on her own label, Possessed Records), Blue Satin Alley (2005), the EP The Lighthouse Keeper (2007) and The Memoirs of An Outlaw (2008), performing on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour in 2004 and 2006 alongside long-term musical collaborator John Winfield.
As an actress she appeared alongside her father in Shadowlands and The Remains of the Day (both 1993), during a period when the two were briefly reconciled. She has also directed theatre productions including Tennessee Williams' Talk To Me Like The Rain, Federico Garcia Lorca's A Shoemaker's Wonderful Wife and Blood Wedding, and Edward Bond's Saved, The Woman and The Worlds.
In December 2020 Hopkins was diagnosed with stage three bowel cancer; she is now in remission, and has since made the documentary Under This Sky (2024) about her life and relationship with her father, alongside a charity album, Stardust.
