Dennis Hopper, whose pot-addled Billy in Easy Rider and psychopathic Frank Booth in Blue Velvet helped put the icon in iconoclastic, has died after a decade-long battle with prostate cancer. He was 74.
The legendary actor died about 9 a.m. Saturday surrounded by family in his Los Angeles home.
Taken ill with flu-like symptoms last September, Hopper later said he was suffering with prostate cancer. Family members told PEOPLE that the disease had spread to other organs in his system.
Early Rebel Role
Born in Dodge City, Kansas – his father, Jay Hopper, reputedly was an intelligence officer in the pre-CIA Office of Strategic Services, which explained his son's peripatetic American upbringing – Hopper was 19 when he was cast in his very first movie opposite none other than James Dean: 1955's Rebel Without a Cause. Hopper played a character named "Goon."
Known off-screen as a rabble-rouser and impossible when it came to taking direction, the young Method actor was soon virtually blacklisted from movies. Resorting to TV dramas and even moonlighting as a Vogue photographer, his turnaround came in 1969 when he joined forces with Peter Fonda, screenwriter Terry Southern and a then unknown B-movie actor named Jack Nicholson to costar in and direct a $400,000 road picture called Easy Rider.
The movie proved a box-office phenomenon, launched the youth movement in Hollywood and turned Hopper into a household name, though not necessary a bankable one. His next directorial effort, 1971's The Last Movie, literally went up in pot smoke.
At the same time, his first marriage – to Hollywood princess Brooke Hayward (daughter of two legends, actress Margaret Sullavan and producer Leland Hayward) – flamed out, and Hopper would go on to marry (and divorce) four more times – including the singer-actress Michelle Phillips, to whom he was wed for nearly a week.
As far as children were concerned, the 1961-69 marriage to Hayward produced a daughter, Marin, now 47; with wife Daria Halprin (1972-76) he had a daughter Ruthanna, 35; and with Katherine LaNasa (1989-92), a son, Henry, 19.
Fighting convention to the very end, only last January, amid bitter claims about her out-of-control spending, a direly sick Hopper filed for divorce from his fifth wife, Victoria Duffy, whom he wed in 1996. The couple also had a daughter, Galen, born in 2003 and to whom Hopper was said to be devoted.
TV Actor and Elder Statesman
Professionally, Hopper managed to keep working, with his career kick-started again by his tour-de-force role in David Lynch's surrealistic 1986 Blue Velvet. In the last decade, when he was devoting himself to art photography, Hopper played several roles on TV, such as himself on Entourage and a villain on 24.
At the time of his work on the Fox series, he told Florida's St. Petersburg Times, "When I was in my 20s, I remember Vincent Price telling me, 'You should play bad guys. You're going to make a great bad guy. And I thought, 'Boy is he crazy. Just because he plays bad guys, he thinks I'm going to be playing bad guys.' But he was right. I make a pretty good living playing the bad guy."
And while he fit comfortably into his real-life role as a kind of Hollywood elder statesman – Hopper jolted many of his early fans by becoming an ardent Republican – the old troublemaker could still look back and see there were times when his excesses overwhelmed him. (In 1982, he was committed to a Los Angeles psychiatric ward after suffering psychotic hallucinations from cocaine and alcohol.)
"Instead of directing 20 films in my life. I have done only six," he told PEOPLE in 1990, expressing regret for the costs of his addictions. "I haven't left a meaningful body of work."
Maybe so, but as Viggo Mortensen, who costarred with the lifelong rebel in 1991's The Indian Runner and 1993's Boiling Point, told the crowd on March 26, 2010, when a frail-looking Hopper received his star on the Hollywood Blvd. Walk of Fame, what set Dennis Hopper apart was "his ability to instill ... fearlessness ... as an artist and friend."
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RIP you psycho. He will be missed.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snhiofL2Rh4
RIP
Shogun Streams Vidya
Yessssssssssssssssssssssss
RIP
they don't it be like it is but it do
Shogun Streams Vidya
It's the best thing Tarrentino ever wrote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGpM9kNEiN0
The guy from Slipknot?
FAMOUS people.
98% of people are saying WTH is Slipknot?
Slipwho?
Slipwhat? Seriously its like a boating company right?
Shogun Streams Vidya
god is killin all our stars lately
Not going to see the likes of him again.
Legendary Actor (Capital L and A earned the hard way).
Essentially, the DNA in one of his cells got damaged and started making other damaged cells. The problem is kind of random. It could be age, heredity, diet, or something in his environment.
and that he liked it in real life I guess
a shame
This.
People seem to think that you only get cancer from certain risk factors:
Skin cancer from the Sun
Lung cancer from Smoking
Mouth cancer from chewing tobacco
Etc etc.
There are a lot of different types of cancers and not all of them are caused by certain things, sometimes they just happen. Also, people who have never smoked (or inhaled 2nd hand smoke) can still get lung cancer.
Hopper is the third. #1 was the guy from Slipknot.
Damn, image broke. Fixing it...
This. So very this. Two great actors bulldozing their way through a great scene.
Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
Uhm, no, it was Ronnie James Dio.
You could form an actor trio from Fess Parker, Coleman, and Hopper.
I used to look forward to that in any movie with him in it, no matter how bad.
R.I.P. Generalissimo Koopa.
My favorite scene ever
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
He seems to do that about this time of year, at least lately. Remember last year?
Anyway...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn1MbU9jOeA
"I made a picture called Super Mario Bros., and my six-year-old son at the time -- he's now 18 -- he said, 'Dad, I think you're probably a pretty good actor, but why did you play that terrible guy King Koopa in Super Mario Bros.?' and I said, 'Well Henry, I did that so you could have shoes,' and he said, 'Dad, I don't ...need shoes that badly.'" -Dennis Hopper
I thought he did great with what he was working with, which according to Bob Hoskins was "a fuckin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin' nightmare. Fuckin' idiots."
That said, I think that instead of shaving Hopper's eyebrows, they should have made them bushier and dyed crimson red, along with the hair on his head. Maybe add some horns. I bet that would have gone a LONG way, even if he looked human otherwise.
As for the other role I'll always remember him from...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaKxRN2LdEI
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He was also a visual artist in his own right.
Just some other info. Also, I'm always surprised by his performances in films from the 50's. I didn't know his work until Blue Velvet on, so that skewed my perception.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqccyUpnZwA
NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW
its not text, so I think its okay to post(as as I understand it the N***** ban is because they don't want the forums showing up as a google hit for that word)
And my respect for him soars again as I read his thoughts on the Mario Brothers movie.
His son's response is pure gold.