{"id":670355,"date":"2026-10-31T00:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T00:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/670355\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T00:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T00:14:10","slug":"tom-hopkins-who-played-fair-citys-christy-phelan-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/670355\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Hopkins, who played Fair City’s Christy Phelan, has died"},"content":{"rendered":"

ACTOR THOMAS \u2018TOM\u2019 Hopkins, who played Fair City\u2019s Christy Phelan, has died.<\/p>\n

The Dubliner played the role of the Carrigstown corner shop\u2019s owner in 74 episodes of the show from 1998 to 2014, when his character departed after a heart attack.<\/p>\n

Hopkins passed away on Monday surrounded by his family and in the care of staff at Carechoice Step Down Facility and St James\u2019s Hospital, his funeral notice said.<\/p>\n

It is asked that any donations be made to Alzheimer Society of Ireland in his memory.<\/p>\n

\"0004a224-800\"
\n Carol and Christy pictured in Fair City.\n<\/p>\n

In his 16 years on the show, notable storylines involving Phelan included his trysts with local publican Carol Foley, his separation from his wife Renee and his health struggles.<\/p>\n

Hopkins landed on the long-running soap opera after leaving a role in the civil service to return to college as a mature student and study drama at Trinity College Dublin.<\/p>\n

Before that, in the 1970s, he was in a band labelled The Utopians.<\/p>\n

In a previous interview<\/a>, he said: \u201cIt was before my graduation. Some professional actors told me of an open audition for a supermarket ad and I went along and got the part.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt went on screen in May and two weeks after that the producer of Fair City at the time called me up and asked me to audition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopkins is survived by his wife Tina and his four sons Anthony, John, Wayne and Lee, as well as his grandchildren and extended family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ACTOR THOMAS \u2018TOM\u2019 Hopkins, who played Fair City\u2019s Christy Phelan, has died. The Dubliner played the role of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[283864,615,93,69545,61,60,255408,145748,283865],"class_list":["post-670355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-christy-phelan","tag-dublin","tag-entertainment","tag-fair-city","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-television","tag-soap-opera","tag-tom-hopkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}