Dennis Hopper

Actor, Director

About

Also Known As

Dennis Lee Hopper

Birth Place

Dodge City, Kansas, USA

Born

May 17, 1936

Died

May 29, 2010

Cause of Death

Prostate Cancer/Liver Failure

Biography

Filmography

Out of the Blue (1982)

Director

The Last Movie (1971)

Director

Photos & Videos

View All

Easy Rider (1969) -- (Movie Clip) I Believe In God

Easy Rider (1969) -- (Movie Clip) Dude Means Nice Guy

Family & Companions

Brooke Hayward

Wife

Married in 1961; divorced in 1969; daughter of agent-producer Leland Hayward and actor Margaret Sullavan; author of family memoir "Haywire"; had been previously married and had two children by her first husband; later married Peter Duchin.

Michelle Phillips

Wife

Singer, actor. Married for eight days in 1970.

Daria Halprin

Wife

Therapist, former actor. Married in 1972; divorced in 1976.

Katherine LaNasa

Wife

Actor, ballet dancer, choreographer. Born c. 1966; married in June 1989; separated in April 1992; divorced; met in 1987; formerly a principal dancer with the Karole Armitage Ballet of New York; later married actor French Stewart.

Bibliography

"Out of the Sixties"

Dennis Hopper (1988)

"Dennis Hopper: From Method to Madness"

J Hoberman, Walker Art Center (1988)

Notes

In a 1996 interview, Hopper revealed that he was suing Peter Fonda, his "Easy Rider" co-star and co-writer, because his old friend supposedly failed to live up to their agreement to share equally in the film's profits.

He had his first museum showing of his paintings in February 2001.

Biography

Once relishing in his image as a drug-addled rebel of the 1960s counterculture, Dennis Hopper overcame years of substance abuse and a string of mediocre films to cement his reputation as one of Hollywood's most prolific and unpredictable actors. Following his screen debut alongside the original Hollywood bad boy, mentor James Dean, in "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955), Hopper nearly shot his career in the foot because of his penchant for being difficult on set. When he returned to Los Angeles after a stint making television in New York, Hopper scored a critical and commercial success as the director, writer and one of the stars of "Easy Rider" (1969), perhaps one of the most culturally impactful film ever made. But his subsequent descent into self-indulgence, drugs and alcohol derailed his career yet again and served as a lively cautionary tale about the excesses of 1970s Hollywood. Finally reaching sobriety in the early 1980s, Hopper re-emerged as a sober, hard-working, middle-aged character actor who made a stunning comeback with standout performances in "Blue Velvet" (1986), "Rivers Edge" (1987) and "True Romance" (1993), all of which transformed the once-reckless rebel into a well-respected veteran of the silver screen.

Born on May 17, 1936 in Dodge City, KS, Hopper was raised on a farm by his father, Jay Millard, a World War II veteran who moved the family to San Diego, CA in 1950, where he managed a post office, while Hopper's mother, Marjorie Mae, became a lifeguard instructor. Not an engaged student by any stretch, Hopper did excel in the drama department and debate at Helix High School in La Mesa, where he was dubbed "most likely to succeed," despite being on the verge of flunking out. Nonetheless, he earned a scholarship to San Diego's Old Globe Theatre, where he delved into the plays of William Shakespeare, among other works. After graduating high school, Hopper moved to Los Angeles and began performing at the Pasadena Playhouse, while making his television debut as an epileptic on an episode of "Medic" (NBC, 1954-56). Because of his realistic portrayal, Hollywood stood up and took notice of the young actor, leading to auditions all around town. But when Columbia Pictures chieftain Harry Cohn told him to drop his Shakespearean pretensions, Hopper told the feared studio head to "F*ck off." Cohn responded by throwing him off the lot.

Despite being banned from Columbia, Hopper was picked up by Warner Bros., who gave him his first film break as a stand-in for James Dean and an onscreen role as an anonymous goon in "Rebel Without A Cause" (1955). Dean immediately became a mentor to Hopper, becoming a major influence on the younger player's acting. Though not necessarily friends away from set, Hopper and Dean developed a strong relationship as student and teacher, respectively. Meanwhile, as "Rebel" became a clarion call for a generation revolting against middle-class American respectability, Dean was suddenly and tragically killed on U.S. Route 466 in Cholame, CA, leaving a nation in mourning and young Hopper devastated for many years. The loss of his mentor meant that Hopper - consciously or not - was to carry on the rebel image as his career progressed. He was seen in "Giant" (1955), Dean's posthumously-released final feature, then appeared in several Westerns, including "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" (1957) and "From Hell to Texas" (1958). On the latter, director Henry Hathaway broke Hopper's spirit for improvising by making him do over 80 takes of a scene in the course of 15 hours, leaving the actor in tears and with a warning he might never work again.

For a spell, it appeared that Hathaway's prediction would hold true. Hopper was dropped by Warner Bros., which prompted the actor to leave for New York City and study method acting with Lee Strasberg for the next five years. His Manhattan sojourn led to several appearances in television projects, including episodes of "The Rifleman" (ABC, 1958-1963), "The Twilight Zone" (CBS, 1959-1964) and "Bonanza" (NBC, 1959-1973), while he took on a secondary career as a photographer which included doing the cover art for one of Ike and Tina Turner's albums. Meanwhile, Hopper's first starring role came in a little-known indie mood piece, "Night Tide" (1963), written and directed by former avant-garde filmmaker, Curtis Harrington. Hopper next turned up in "Tarzan and Jane Regained. . . Sort of" (1964), an experimental 16mm film by famed pop artist Andy Warhol. Eventually, a better-behaved Hopper returned to Hollywood and began landing features again, including a role in the John Wayne-Dean Martin vehicle "The Sons of Katie Elder" (1965). Hopper's career seemed back on track after he earned several positive notices for playing the weak-willed son of the villain (James Gregory) behind the murder of a local sheriff (Paul Fix).

Hopper joined forces with director Harrington once again, playing a doomed astronaut in an entertaining low-budget sci-fi flick entitled "Queen of Blood" (1966). Hopper enhanced his counter-culture credentials with appearances in Roger Corman's fondly remembered druggy exploitation movie "The Trip" (1967) and Bob Rafelson's "Head" (1968), a zany vehicle for The Monkees co-scripted by Jack Nicholson. Additional supporting roles in Westerns followed - "Hang 'Em High" (1968) and "True Grit" (1969) - before his anti-establishment reputation was written in stone when he directed the iconic "Easy Rider" (1969). A road movie on motorcycles through reactionary America -a trip in more than one sense - the film featured a notorious psychedelic sequence, shot in a cemetery in New Orleans. In shooting the bizarre 16mm sequence, Hopper famously convinced fellow actor Peter Fonda to talk to a statue of the Lady Madonna as if it were his own mother who had committed suicide when Fonda was 10 years old. Upon its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, "Easy Rider" was hailed by critics before becoming a huge box office hit in the United States, where it helped usher in a new generation of filmmakers that overthrew Hollywood's old guard and created a second golden age.

Thanks to "Easy Rider," Hopper found himself at the pinnacle of his career - for the time being. Almost as soon as he was hoisted upon the shoulders of the Hippie generation, Hopper was almost buried forever by an avalanche of booze, drugs and his own unyielding hubris. The first signs of disaster came with his eight day marriage to Michele Phillips, one of the members of The Mamas & the Papas, in 1970. Phillips claimed that during their brief time together, Hopper kept her in handcuffs and randomly fired guns throughout the house. Meanwhile, he directed his second film, "The Last Movie" (1971), an experimental film shot in Peru about the travails of a film crew making an American Western in a remote location. Hallucinatory to a fault, the movie's constant flashbacks, flash-forwards, missing frames and other stylistic tricks convinced many - particularly the studio executives that gave Hopper full artistic control - that "The Last Movie" was nothing more than a drug-addled mess. Still, the film did earn the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, though it subsequently died a fast, ignominious death at the box office. It would be another 16 years before another studio would allow him to step behind the camera again.

To make matters worse, Hopper documented the long, arduous making of "The Last Movie" with the documentary "American Dreamer" (1971), a sordid account that depicted Hopper doing drugs, engaging in group sex and walking the streets of Taos, NM naked while spending the better part of a year editing his movie. Meanwhile, the acting offers became fewer and farther between, while Hopper began to fade into obscurity as the 1970s progressed. He starred as an Australian gold-digger forced into a life of crime in "Mad Dog" (1976), then played a Vietnam veteran traveling the United States in an increasingly rabid state of paranoia in "Tracks" (1976). After "The American Friend" (1977), directed by Wim Wenders, which helped initiate the process of his rehabilitation as a talent, Hopper traveled to West Germany to make "Couleur chair" (1977), then to France for "The Apprentice Sorcerers" (1977) and "L'Ordre et la Securite du Monde" (1978).

By the late 1970s, Hopper's drug habits - which included massive amounts of cocaine to keep him upright enough to continue drinking - and erratic behavior had virtually sent him into exile, though at the time, he seemed to revel in the role of the ugly American. He did, however, manage to make one of his more memorable appearances in years with "Apocalypse Now" (1979), playing a flipped-out, rhapsodizing photojournalist living in the camp of the infamous Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who attaches himself to the military operative (Martin Sheen) sent to kill Kurtz. Despite Hopper's amusingly manic performance, there was no way to ignore the fact that he was on the verge of an incredible downfall. While acting in "Out of the Blue" (1980), a Canadian film shot in the U.S., Hopper managed to sneak back behind the camera and took over direction of the film in mid-production. After managing to complete roles in "Rumble Fish" (1983) and "The Osterman Weekend" (1983), Hopper finally hit rock bottom. In 1983, a strung out and hallucinating Hopper stumbled naked along a Mexican highway, as weird visions of space ships and World War III consumed his mind. He was eventually picked up by the police, sent back to the United States and institutionalized.

Hopper checked himself into rehab and began to sober up. Though often associated with drugs, Hopper's main addiction was to alcohol. Meanwhile, he began his second career revival in earnest with a mesmerizing performance as the sociopathic, ether-addicted criminal Frank Booth in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" (1986). Next, Hopper was cast as a recovering alcoholic and assistant basketball coach in the bathetic "Hoosiers" (1986). The actor seemed to find a perfect vehicle to proclaim his newfound sobriety, while receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his efforts. He followed up with another strong performance as a depraved ex-biker with a missing leg and a predilection for blow-up dolls in "River's Edge" (1987). His rehabilitation seemed complete in a triumphant return to the director's chair with "Colors" (1988), a stark urban drama about two anti-gang cops (Robert Duvall and Sean Penn) dealing with a raging war between The Bloods and The Crips in South Central Los Angeles. Hopper quickly followed with two more directing projects, "The Hot Spot" (1990), an erotic film noir starring Don Johnson and Virginia Madsen, and "Backtrack" (1990), a crime thriller that depicted him as an assassin on the hunt for a witness to a mob killing (Jodie Foster).

By the time the 1990s rolled around, Hopper had replaced his old image as the drug-crazed maniac with the profile of a regularly employed character lead in film and television, effortlessly segueing from drama to comedy; from big-budget spectacular to low-budget indies. In 1991, he appeared in Sean Penn's directorial debut, "The Indian Runner," and two made-for-cable movies, "Paris Trout" (Showtime) and "Doublecrossed" (HBO). In "Boiling Point" (1993), a lukewarm attempt to recreate a 1950s-styled crime flick, Hopper played a rather likeable loser whose desire to stay alive causes many deaths. Then in "Super Mario Brothers" (1993), based on the once-popular Nintendo video game, Hopper played a live-action version of reptilian villain King Koopa. Following a turn as a smarmy, psychotic hit man in John Dahl's "Red Rock West" (1993), Hopper delivered on of his better roles - which included one of his favorite scenes - in Tony Scott's "True Romance" (1993). As the generally sympathetic former cop father of a comic book store clerk (Christian Slater) on the run from the mob, Hopper gets tortured by the head gangster (Christopher Walken) before launching into an unforgettable Quentin Tarantino-scripted speech about the ancestry of Sicilians. Hopper also made a stir in a series of Nike commercials by playing an obsessive fan posing as an NFL referee who routinely imposes himself on various players like Bruce Smith and Sterling Sharpe. It was projects like these that made Hopper - now in his mid-fifties - an arbiter of cool among even younger audiences who had no memory of his past triumphs and travails.

By the mid-1990s, Hopper had become a reliable villain for such special effects-driven blockbusters as "Speed" (1994) and "Waterworld" (1995), while still appearing in such low-profile efforts as the comedy "Search and Destroy" (1995), playing a late-night cable guru and novelist, and the documentary "Who Is Henry Jaglom?" (1995). The nearly 60-year-old Hopper starred in the romantic melodrama "Carried Away" (1996), convincingly playing a forty-something school teacher who cares for his invalid mother and juggles a long-term, low-intensity relationship with another teacher (Amy Irving) as well as a passionate affair with a 17-year-old student (Amy Locane). It was during this film that the man who had spent a good part of his younger, drugged out days naked in public, suddenly shied away from doing a nude scene. After playing a European art dealer in Julian Schnabel's biopic "Basquiat" (1996), Hopper had starring roles in lesser features like "Space Trucker" (1997), "Meet the Deedles" (1998) and "Bad City Blues" (1999). Also in 1999, Hopper was cast as Hank, the father of Matthew McConaughey's character Ed in the comedy feature, "EdTV." Making the jump back to series television, he made a guest-starring appearance on "24" (Fox, 2001-10), playing a Balkan mercenary who hatches a personal vendetta against agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and presidential candidate, Senator David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert).

In 2002, he joined Vin Diesel and John Malkovich for the Brian Koppelman and David Levien comedy "Knockaround Guys," then played a corrupt accountant being protected from a notorious crime lord (Simon Majiba) in "The Target" (2002). Continuing to appear in just about anything that came his way, Hopper had starring roles in the romantic comedy "All the Way" (2003), the crime thriller "Out of Season" (2004), and the coming-of-age drama "Americano" (2005). Hopper landed a rare regular series role on television, playing a colonel in the Joints Chief of Staff at the Pentagon in the short-lived military drama, "E-Ring" (NBC, 2005-06). Back to features, he had supporting roles in "Land of the Dead" (2005) and "The Crow: Wicked Prayer" (2005), then appeared in the little-seen psychological thriller "Memory" (2007). Following a cameo in "Entourage" (HBO, 2004-11), Hopper returned to another regular series role, starring in the small screen adaptation of Paul Haggis' "Crash" (Starz, 2008-09), which examined how racial and social issues intersected in various power struggles in Los Angeles. Hopper played lewd record producer Ben Cendars, a self-destructive man struggling to get back on top of his game. It was not long after his move to television that Hopper revealed to the public that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. A brief rush to the hospital from "flu-like symptoms" in late 2009 made headlines, but he appeared to recover quickly before disappearing from the public eye. In January 2010, amidst rumors that his health was declining rapidly, he filed for divorce from his fifth wife, Victoria Duffy, after 18 years of marriage and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He passed away from prostate cancer on May 29, 2010.

Filmography

Life Events

1949

Moved with family to San Diego, CA

1955

Film acting debut in "Rebel Without a Cause" starring James Dean

1955

Made TV debut on an episode of "Medic" (NBC) as a young epileptic

1956

Again cast opposite Dean in "Giant"

1958

Dropped from contract at Warner Bros.; left Hollywood for New York and studied acting with Lee Strasberg for five years

1958

Involved in legendary conflict with director Henry Hathaway on the set of "From Hell to Texas"; reportedly did over 100 takes of a simple scene before giving the requested line reading

1963

First feature starring role, "Night Tide"; written and directed by Curtis Harrington

1967

First collaboration with Peter Fonda, "The Trip"; a low-budget cult film directed by Roger Corman

1969

Feature directing and co-writing debut (also co-starred), "Easy Rider"; shared Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination with Peter Fonda and Terry Southern

1971

Credited as co-writer of documentary about himself, "The American Dreamer"

1971

Made the financially and critically failed, "The Last Movie" with Peter Fonda and Michelle Phillips; film's only success was winning the Critics Prize at the Venice Film Festival

1979

Won renewed attention for small but showy role in Francis Coppola's "Apocalypse Now"

1986

Acted in the controversial role of Frank, a nitrous oxide sniffing thug, in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet"

1986

Earned Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his protrayal of an alcoholic basketball fan in "Hoosiers"

1988

Directed the critically acclaimed feature "Colors" starring Robert Duvall and Sean Penn

1990

Helmed (also co-starred) the noir romance "Catchfire"; removed his name after post-production trouble (credited under the fictional pseudonym Alan Smithee)

1991

Earned an Emmy nomination for Showtime's "Paris Trout"

1991

Acted in Sean Penn's feature directorial debut "The Indian Runner"

1994

Had villainous role as a mad bomber in the hit film "Speed"

1995

Played the villain, Deacon in "Waterworld"

1995

Was the subject of the documentary "Dennis Hopper: L.A. Blues"

1996

Displayed romantic side in a richly realized, change-of-pace characterization of a Midwestern farmer in "Carried Away"

1997

Cast as Mickey Wayne in "The Blackout"

1998

Portrayed Frank Slater in the comedy feature "Meet The Deedles"

1999

Played Matthew McConaughey's father in "Edtv"

2001

Portrayed villain Victor Drazen in the first season of the FOX series "24"

2002

Cast in the crime comedy "Knockaround Guys"

2003

Starred as Frank in Steve Balderson's thriller, "Firecracker"

2004

Appeared on the NBC's "Las Vegas" as head of the Montecito Hotel and Casino's sister operation in Louisiana

2006

Starred in "10th and Wolf" an indie film based on a story by Bobby Moresco and Chazz Palminteri

2007

Cast opposite Billy Zane in the psychological thriller, "Memory"

2008

Co-starred with Charlize Theron and Nick Stahl in the indie drama, "Sleepwalking"

2010

Voiced the character of Tony in the animated feature, "Alpha and Omega"; his final feature film project

2010

Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Photo Collections

Easy Rider - Lobby Cards

Here are a few Lobby Cards from Easy Rider (1969), starring Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson. Lobby Cards were 11" x 14" posters that came in sets of 8. As the name implies, they were most often displayed in movie theater lobbies, to advertise current or coming attractions.

The Trip - Movie Poster

Here is the American one-sheet movie poster for the exploitation picture The Trip (1967). One-sheets measured 27x41 inches, and were the poster style most commonly used in theaters.

The Trip - Pressbook

Here is the original campaign book (pressbook) for The Trip (1967). Pressbooks were sent to exhibitors and theater owners to aid them in publicizing the film's run in their theater.