Hopkins was a native of Pasadena, California; his mother Una Nixson Hopkins was a magazine writer and an art director on at least a dozen silent films.During his long career, Hopkins was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards and won four.Hopkins had a professional and intimate relationship with silent film director William Desmond Taylor, whose unsolved murder was one of early Hollywood's biggest scandals.Hopkins' unpublished 1981 autobiography, Caught in the Act, was used as a major source for Charles Higham's book on the Taylor murder.[1] Over the course of his career, Hopkins was nominated 13 times for an Academy Award, all in the category of Art Direction.