Violet Hopson on AllMovie

Although American by birth, Violet Hopson became a star in England and would in fact epitomize the typically demure English heroine in such early British silent melodramas as The Vicar of Wakefield (1913), Barnaby Rudge (1915), The Soul of Guilda Lois (1919), and A Daughter of Eve (1919). The first English film actress to head her own production company (with producer/director Walter West), Hopson specialized in horse-racing pictures, a genre rather more popular with British film producers than their customers, who much preferred more robust American fare. Occasionally playing a Cockney waif (Vi of Smith's Alley, 1921), Hopson excelled in portraying highborn ladies of the landed gentry, as in Beautiful Kitty (1923) and The Great Turf Mystery (1924). Her starring career already over by the advent of talkies, Violet Hopson played minor roles in films such as Self-Made Lady (1932), starring the Hollywood-bound Heather Angel, and One Precious Year (1933), featuring Basil Rathbone.