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William Hootkins (July 5, 1948 – October 23, 2005) was an American actor probably best known on film for his roles as the cult favorite Red Six (Porkins) in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) and as the crooked Lt. Max Eckhardt in Batman (1989).

It was the sheer exuberance of Hootkins's acting, matched with his imposing bulk and very often a full flowing beard that made him memorable even in the smallest roles as well as the unrelenting invention of his characterizations. As well as the cult roles that made him a welcome figure at fan conventions, particularly for Star Wars, he appeared in significant parts in such films as Hear My Song (1991), where he was the Mr X who was presumed to be the Irish tenor Josef Locke under a false name.

In the 2002 television remake of The Magnificent Ambersons he played Uncle George, and was Santa Claus in Like Father, Like Santa (1998).

Hootkins was born in Dallas, Texas, but made his home in London, England, from the early 1970s until 2002, when he moved to Los Angeles. Having studied at Princeton University where he became fluent in Mandarin Chinese and was a mainstay of the Theatre Intime, making a particular impact with his performance in Orson Welles's Moby-Dick Rehearsed, he trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA).

In England he found work in the theatre as well as in film, and he would have his greatest success on stage portraying Alfred Hitchcock in Terry Johnson's 2003 hit play Hitchcock Blonde, first at the Royal Court Theatre and in London's West End. It was ironic that his triumph on the English stage followed his move to California.

He was a much sought-after voice artist, recording dozens of plays for BBC Radio Drama where his roles ranged from J. Edgar Hoover and Orson Welles to Winston Churchill. In audio books, he read works by Jack London, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Carl Hiaasen and performed a complete reading of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick for Naxos Audiobooks in some 24 hours and 50 minutes. He also voiced Dingodile in Crash Bandicoot: Warped, and did the voice acting for Maximillian Roivas in the cult hit Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.

At the age of fifteen, Hootkins found himself caught up in the FBI's investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy when he was interviewed about Mrs Ruth Paine, the woman "harbouring" Marina Oswald, the Russian wife of the presumed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. He had been studying Russian with Mrs Paine at his school, St Marks in Dallas, where he also developed his taste for theatre, joining the same drama group as Tommy Lee Jones.

William Michael "Bill" Hootkins died of pancreatic cancer in Santa Monica, California on 23 October 2005.

External links

• William Hootkins at Find-A-Grave.

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