Hollywood has lost a real legend today with the passing of Dennis Lee Hopper at the age of 74. The man still best known for making Easy Rider enjoyed a long and varied career in the entertainment industry, appearing on screens big and small, as well as numerous stage productions. He was also a prolific artist, working with photography, sculpture and paint.
Born in Dodge City, Kansas, Hopper developed an early fascination with acting, and, after his family moved to San Diego when he was 13, he began to perform in high school. He would go on to study at the Old Globe theatre in San Diego.
His first proper credit came on TV, in an episode of the series Medic in 1955, and he was soon winning guest starring roles on a variety of shows, though that didn’t stop him from making the job to movies. Few actors can claim such an iconic first film as Hopper: he launched his cinematic career with a small part in Rebel Without A Cause. He admired James Dean greatly, and ended up appearing in another Dean pic, Giant. Dean’s tragically premature death had a great impact on Hopper, who took it badly.
After a stint in New York studying with acting tutor Lee Strasberg, Hopper scored more film roles, including Cool Hand Luke and two films with another film legend, John Wayne – 1965’s The Sons Of Katie Elder and 1969’s True Grit. He and Wayne became fast friends.
But it was writing, directing and co-starring in Easy Rider that really drove his career into the stratosphere. Despite constant arguments with co-star Peter Fonda, he produced an acclaimed piece of work, which scored Oscar nominations for the film and the other lead, Jack Nicholson. "We'd gone through the whole '60s and nobody had made a film about anybody smoking grass without going out and killing a bunch of nurses," Hopper told Entertainment Weekly in 2005. "I wanted **Easy Rider **to be a time capsule for people about that period."
Hopper’s own struggles with drugs and alcohol would dominate a lot of the time after Rider’s release, and he even ended up vanishing from the scene while editing his follow-up, 1971’s The Last Movie. After spending much of the ‘70s in lower budget European fare, he came back to prominence with his role as a crazed photojournalist in Apocalypse Now.
Appearances in the likes of Rumblefish and** The Osterman Weekend** followed and Hopper attempted to clean up his life by entering drug rehab. While his film career faltered, he still had his art to fall back on, though his gas huffing, psychopathic turn as Frank Booth in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet brought him back to prominence. Ironically, in the same year, he won his second Oscar nomination for sports drama** Hoosiers**.
The 1990s saw him slow down the pace of his career, though he contributed villainous roles in the likes of Speed (“Pop quiz, hotshot!”) and Waterworld. He continued to work solidly until last year.
More recently, he had worked on shows such as the TV adaptation of Crash, and had contributed a voice to the animated movie Alpha And Omega, which is scheduled for release later this year. In March, he was presented with a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, and though frail, he attended the presentation surrounded by pals such as Jack Nicholson.
Hopper lived a varied private life, having been married five times and fathering five children. His artwork has been displayed in galleries around the world, and he's been the public face of various causes. He had been ill with prostate cancer since last September, and died peacefully in his Venice home surrounded by family and friends on Saturday morning.
You can expect more on Hopper in the coming days, but for now, just this: he was both an icon and an iconoclast who will be sorely missed.