Neil Hope Dies at 35 Neil Hope grew up in the 1980s before an audience of millions as a star in a pair of gritty Canadian television dramas, "Degrassi Junior High" and its sequel, "Degrassi High." The shows were cultural touchstones in Canada and cult favorites in the United States, where they anticipated teenage docudramas like MTV's "Real World" and soaps like "Beverly Hills, 90210." Mr. Hope had few secrets left after his five years in the role of the troubled teenage character Derek (Wheels) Wheeler. The show's producers admitted all along that the story of Wheels, a boy who stumbles through misfortunes before drifting into alcoholism, drew broadly on the life of Mr. Hope, who never had formal acting training. When the series ended in 1991, he spoke openly about the wages of alcoholism in a kind of public-service documentary, revealing that he was the child of alcoholics who had virtually abandoned him and had fed their drinking on his TV earnings. He said he wanted to convey a message to other teenagers whose parents were substance abusers: "It's nothing to be ashamed of. Because it's not your fault. He was 19. There is no map through the territory Mr. Hope navigated from that moment of heartfelt communication to the final moment of his life, when he had become so isolated that it would take four years before his own family learned that he had died. He was found dead on Nov. 25, 2007, in a room in a Hamilton, Ontario, boarding house. Neither the police, who concluded that no foul play had been involved, nor the coroner's officials who removed the body recognized the name or the face of the deceased. He was 35. Unclaimed, his body was buried the following March in a municipal cemetery. Family members, who declined to be interviewed, found out about his death only recently. "It has been confirmed that Neil passed away," a relative said in a notice posted on a "Degrassi" fan Web site on Jan. 12. The news emerged in Canadian newspapers only this month. "It's hard to describe the emotion this has generated," said Sam Tweedle, a Canadian television critic who wrote about Mr. Hope's death on his blog, Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict, and who spoke in an interview. He was a good guy, who had all the worst possible things happen to him and made some bad decisions. Mr. Hope, who was born in Toronto on Sept. 24, 1972, was an actor who essentially played one part. Like most of the "Degrassi" cast members, he was recruited from Toronto schools. He was 10 when he was cast in a guest role on a precursor show, "The Kids of Degrassi Street." The job was a godsend, he told interviewers. Watching television had been his fantasy escape, he said, and acting in it would make the escape literal. In some ways it did, though the fictional world he entered as Derek Wheeler, beginning with "Degrassi Junior High" in 1987, was a harrowing one. All its characters portrayed teenagers confronting crises over issues like sexual abuse, racism, unwanted pregnancy and AIDS, but the troubles dealt Wheels made him the Job of the cast. After his parents are killed by a drunk driver, Wheels learns that they were actually his adoptive parents, that his biological mother is dead and that his biological father has shunned him. Wheels drinks, he drives, and by the final episode of "Degrassi High" he finds himself in jail, charged with killing one person and blinding another in a drunk-driving crash. By the end of the show, Mr. Hope himself had a drinking problem, and though he had wanted to attend film school, he all but dropped out of sight, only to emerge years later to make a guest appearance in a 10th-anniversary "Degrassi" reunion special. A new version of the show began in 2001 and appears on TeenNick, an offshoot of Nickelodeon. At the reunion, he told former castmates that he had been working as a forklift operator, a furniture salesman and a customer service representative for a pizza chain. In the reunion episode, Wheels has recently been released from prison and appears as a drifter looking in at the festivities through a window. Fans of the show would sometimes spot Mr. Hope on the streets of Toronto and Windsor, where he alternately resided, said a former fiancée, Christina Boulard. "They shouted: "Wheels! Is that you?" " Ms. Boulard said in a telephone interview. But she told friends never to mention Mr. Hope's character, even in fun. He loved his time in television, she said, but he was not Wheels. "He was Neil," she said. They were different people. His contact with his two brothers and a sister became intermittent at best. As much as a year could pass without word. In 2005, Mr. Hope was tracked down in Windsor and interviewed for an entertainment news show. He was thinner than people remembered, his long hair shorn to the nub. He said he was working at odd jobs, still hoping to go back to television. He conceded that he had probably not been mature enough to find his feet when "Degrassi High" had ended. "I'm not saying I don't like my life," he added. I'm just saying it would have been beneficial - another season or two - my life would have maybe been a little different than it is now.