Anna Hopkins is a Canadian actress, screenwriter, director, and entrepreneur from Montreal, Quebec. Best known for playing the villain Lilith in Shadowhunters and journalist Monica Stuart in The Expanse, she has built a multidisciplinary career that spans television, independent film, and restaurant ownership in Toronto. Born into a family of artists, her creative identity has been shaped by visual arts, academic study, and a genuine passion for storytelling.
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Anna Hopkins Wiki-Bio
| Field | Details |
| Full Name | Anna Hopkins |
| Date of Birth | February 12, 1987 |
| Age | 39 Years |
| Profession | Actress, Screenwriter, Director |
| Birth Place | Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| Hometown | Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Ethnicity | Jewish Romanian and Hungarian (mother’s side), Scottish and Welsh (father’s side) |
| Relationship Status | Married |
Family
| Field | Details |
| Husband | Danny Barna (Journalist, married September 2, 2023) |
| Father | Tom Hopkins (Painter and Visual Artist) |
| Mother | Rita Markovits (Graphic Designer) |
Education
| Field | Details |
| High School | Royal West Academy, Montreal |
| College | Dawson College — Cinema & Communications; Professional Theater Program |
| University | Concordia University — B.A. in Communication Studies (2012) |
| International Study | Sciences Po (Paris Institute of Political Studies) — B.A. in Political Science |
| Certificate | UCLA Extension — Feature Screenwriting |
Anna Hopkins Background
Early Life
Anna Hopkins grew up in Montreal in a household centered entirely on the arts. Her father Tom was a respected painter and visual artist, while her mother Rita worked as a graphic designer. This environment surrounded her with visual vocabulary and design thinking from an early age, which later shaped her directorial eye and approach to screen composition.
Before pursuing acting, she trained seriously in hip-hop dancing and initially planned a career in professional dance. This background gave her a strong awareness of spatial dynamics and physical presence — qualities that became central to both her performance work and her directing style. Growing up bilingual in Montreal, she became native-fluent in both French and English, allowing her to work across both Canadian film markets.
Family Background
Her partner and husband, Danny Barna, is a journalist and magazine editor who has written for Toronto Life and served as news editor at Complex. The couple had been together since 2016 and married on September 2, 2023, holding their wedding reception at their own restaurant, Danny’s Pizza Tavern on College Street in Toronto’s Little Italy — a venue that has become the center of both their personal and professional lives. (Wikipedia)
Anna Hopkins Career
Hopkins began her acting career in 2005 with a role in the television miniseries Human Trafficking alongside Mira Sorvino and Donald Sutherland. Her major breakthrough came in 2010 when she was cast as Kate Panofsky in the feature film Barney’s Version, appearing opposite Paul Giamatti and Dustin Hoffman. The role earned her a nomination for Outstanding Performance — Female at the 2011 ACTRA Montreal Awards.
Her genre career expanded steadily through Defiance (2014–2015), where she was promoted to series regular, and through recurring arcs in the Arrowverse as Samantha Clayton across both Arrow and The Flash. She played Monica Stuart, a sharp investigative journalist, across 20 episodes of the critically acclaimed The Expanse (2018–2022). Her most high-profile role came as Lilith, the central villain of Shadowhunters Season 3, earning nominations for Choice TV Villain at the 2018 Teen Choice Awards and Best Villain at the 2018 TV Scoop Awards.
Alongside acting, she developed a parallel career as a writer-director. Her short film The Give and Take (2018) premiered at the Austin Film Festival. Her third directorial short, Dish Pit (2025), premiered in the Short Cuts program at the Toronto International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Short Film at the Directors Guild of Canada Awards — filmed entirely inside her own restaurant. She received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Lead Performance in a Web Program for For the Record (2021) and another for Best Guest Performance, Comedy, for her appearance in Letterkenny (2021).
In August 2022, Hopkins and Danny Barna opened Danny’s Pizza Tavern on College Street in Toronto, later expanding with a companion bar called Danny’s Next Door. She designed the restaurant’s atmosphere herself, drawing on her film training to create a warm, mid-century tavern aesthetic that she describes as a “living room” for the neighborhood.
Some Lesser-Known Facts
- She trained extensively in hip-hop dancing before shifting her focus to acting and originally planned a professional dance career.
- Her first job was at her mother’s computer software company, Computer Action, in North York — an experience she says grounded her in the logistics of running a business.
- She earned degrees from two universities simultaneously — Concordia in Montreal and Sciences Po in Paris — combining communications theory with political science.
- She adopted a daily meditation practice around 2021, crediting it with helping her balance acting, directing, and running a restaurant.
- Her restaurant Danny’s Pizza Tavern specializes in Chicago and St. Louis-style thin-crust bar pies and was entirely designed by Hopkins herself based on her film background.
- She and Danny Barna held their wedding reception at their own restaurant on September 2, 2023.
- Her short film Dish Pit was shot entirely inside Danny’s Pizza Tavern, making her commercial business a literal film set.
- She has portrayed a journalist in three separate productions — Defiance, The Expanse, and V/H/S/94 — a recurring archetype she has publicly reflected on in interviews.
- Her horror segment in V/H/S/94 as investigative reporter Holly Marciano was one of the most praised segments of the anthology on Shudder.
- She has provided voice acting in major video games, including Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction (2010) and Watch Dogs (2014), where she voiced main story character Nicky Pearce.
- Her work in Shadowhunters as Lilith required extensive physical and emotional preparation, resulting in one of the most stylized villain performances in the show’s run.
- She is represented by agents across both Los Angeles and Toronto, splitting her time between the two cities depending on production schedules.
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