Ian Smith (born 19 June 1938) is an Australian soap opera character actor, television producer (associate) and television screenwriter, best known today for his long-running itinerant role as the caring, kindly coffee shop owner Harold Bishop in the soap opera Neighbours, since 1987, when the series was taken over by Network Ten.

Biographie

Smith was 54 when his mother Connie Smith, realising she had twenty-four hours to live, finally admitted to him that he had been adopted. After her death, Smith went in search of his natural mother Peg Kline, whom he finally found. According to Kline's story, Smith was conceived when she was fourteen, the product of rape, and was put up for adoption. Kline eventually married and had two children from this marriage. She never told anyone besides her husband about her first son until she was contacted by Smith via a letter.

She contacted his wife Gail Smith, who mentioned that her husband was a prominent Neighbours actor, to which Kline replied, "I've never seen Neighbours in my life". Smith and Kline were reunited and he has built a strong relationship with his mother and two half-brothers, although Smith says that he doesn't feel a mother–son relationship. He calls Kline "one of my best friends". Peg Kline died in May 2005 after a battle with cancer.
Smith was believed to have first told the story to the public in an exclusive interview on the biographical documentary series Australian Story on March 2005. However, he had actually revealed much of this in a BBC interview some years before.