The image of actor Dennis Hopper as a wild and intense bad boy has softened in recent years, but he's still famous for his many roles in independent movies and for his work in a handful of cinema classics. He started in the movies in the early 1950s, appearing in Johnny Guitar (1953), Rebel Without A Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). In the '60s his reputation as a "difficult" actor who favored improvisation kept him from getting many mainstream roles, and he appeared in several low-budget movies, including the "hippie" cult favorites The Trip (1967) and Head (1968). He directed and starred in 1969's Easy Rider with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson, a box office success that steered Hollywood toward counter-culture marketing. During the 1970s Hopper was mostly known for being out of control and out of work, excepting a memorable role as a whacked-out journalist in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979, starring Martin Sheen). His career was revived in the late 1980s by crazed performances in David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) and the teen-angst drama River's Edge (1986), and by a surprisingly understated presence in Hoosiers (1986, starring Gene Hackman). He followed with a spurt of good parts in smaller films, including TV's Paris Trout (1991) and the feature films Nails (1992) and Boiling Point (1993, with Wesley Snipes). Since then his most memorable role has been as the villain in Speed (1994, starring Keanu Reeves), but he seems to pop up often enough in independent films and spots on TV, including as a ruthless villain in the first season of 24 (starring Kiefer Sutherland) and as a member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in the 2005 series E-Ring (co-starring Benjamin Bratt).
Hopper is also an art collector, painter and photographer.
Career Highlights: Easy Rider, Speed, Red Rock West
First Major Screen Credit: Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Biography
The odyssey of Dennis Hopper has been one of Hollywood's longest, strangest trips. A onetime teen performer, he went through a series of career metamorphoses -- studio pariah, rebel filmmaker, drug casualty, and comeback kid -- before finally settling comfortably into the role of character actor par excellence, with a rogues' gallery of killers and freaks unmatched in psychotic intensity and demented glee. Along the way, Hopper defined a generation, documenting the shining hopes and bitter disappointments of the hippie counterculture and bringing their message to movie screens everywhere. By extension, he spearheaded a revolt in the motion picture industry, forcing the studio establishment to acknowledge a youth market they'd long done their best to deny.
Born May 17, 1936 in Dodge City, Kansas, Hopper began acting during his teen years, and made his professional debut on the TV series Medic. In 1953 he made his film bow in Nicholas Ray's cult-favorite Western Johnny Guitar, and two years later reunited with the director in the classic Rebel Without a Cause, appearing as a young tough opposite James Dean. Hopper and Dean became close friends during filming, and also worked together on 1956's Giant. After Dean's tragic death, it was often remarked that Hopper attempted to fill his friend's shoes by borrowing much of his persona, absorbing the late icon's famously defiant attitude and becoming so temperamental that his once-bright career quickly began to wane.
Seeking roles far removed from the stereotypical 'troubled teens' which previously dotted his resume, Hopper began training with the Actors Studio. However, on the set of Henry Hathaway's From Hell to Texas he so incensed cast and crew with his insistence upon multiple takes for his improvisational techniques -- the reshoots sometimes numbering upwards of 100 -- that he found himself a Hollywood exile. He spent much of the next decade mired in "B"-movies, if he was lucky enough to work at all. Producers considered him such a risk that upon completing 1960's Key Witness he did not reappear on-screen for another three years. With a noteworthy role in Hathaway's 1965 John Wayne western The Sons of Katie Elder, Hopper made tentative steps towards a comeback. He then appeared in a number of psychedelic films, including 1967's The Trip and the following year's Monkees feature Head, and earned a new audience among anti-establishment viewers.
With friends Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson in front of the camera, Hopper decided to direct his own movie, and secured over $400,000 in financing to begin filming a screenplay written by novelist Terry Southern. The result was 1969's Easy Rider, a sprawling, drug-fueled journey through an America torn apart by the conflict in Vietnam. Initially rejected by producer Roger Corman, the film became a countercultural touchstone, grossing millions at the box office and proving to Hollywood executives that the ever-expanding youth market and their considerable spending capital would indeed react to films targeted to their issues and concerns, spawning a cottage industry of like-minded films. Long a pariah, Hopper was suddenly hailed as a major new filmmaker, and his success became so great that in 1971 he produced an autobiographical documentary, American Dreamer, exploring his life and times.
The true follow-up to Easy Rider, however, was 1971's The Last Movie, an excessive, self-indulgent mess that, while acclaimed by jurors at the Venice Film Festival, was otherwise savaged by critics and snubbed by audiences. Once again Hopper was left picking up the pieces of his career; he appeared only sporadically in films throughout the 1970s, most of them made well outside of Hollywood. His personal life a shambles -- his marriage to singer/actress Michelle Phillips lasted just eight days -- Hopper spent much of the decade in a haze, earning a notorious reputation as an unhinged wild man. A bizarre appearance as a disturbed photojournalist in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now did little to repair most perceptions of his sanity.
Then in 1980, Hopper traveled to Canada to appear in a small film titled Out of the Blue. At the outset of the production he was also asked to take over as director, and to the surprise of many, the picture appeared on schedule and to decent reviews. Slowly he began to restake his territory in American films, accepting roles in diverse fare ranging from 1983's teen drama Rumble Fish to the 1985 comedy My Science Project. In 1986 Hopper returned to prominence with a vengeance. His role as the feral, psychopathic Frank Booth in David Lynch's masterpiece Blue Velvet was among the most stunning supporting turns in recent memory, while his touching performance as an alcoholic assistant coach in the basketball drama Hoosiers earned an Academy Award nomination.
While acclaimed oddball turns in subsequent films like 1987's The River's Edge threatened to typecast Hopper as a professional sociopath, there was no doubting his return to Hollywood's hot list, and in 1988 he directed Colors, a charged police drama starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. While subsequent directorial efforts like 1989's Chattahoochee and 1990's film noir The Hot Spot failed to create the same kind of box office returns as Easy Rider over two decades earlier, his improbable comeback continued throughout the 1990s with roles in such acclaimed, quirky films as 1993's True Romance and 1996's Basquiat. Hopper was also the villain-du-jour in a number of Hollywood blockbusters, including 1994's Speed and the following year's Waterworld, and was even a pitchman for Nike athletic wear. He also did a number of largely forgettable films, one exception being Ron Howard's EdTV (1999). In addition, he also played writer and Beat extraordinaire William S. Burroughs in a 1999 documentary called The Source with Johnny Depp as Jack Kerouac and John Turturro as Allen Ginsberg.
In 1997 Hopper was awarded the distinction of appearing 87th in Empire Magazine's list of "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time." ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
"You want to hear about insanity? I was found running naked through the jungles in Mexico. At the Mexico City airport, I decided I was in the middle of a movie and walked out on the wing on takeoff. My body... my liver... okay, my brain... went."
Dennis Lee Hopper (born May 17, 1936) is an
Academy Award-nominated American actor and film-maker. He is known primarily for playing nervy, slightly-unhinged characters, and is noted for roles in
Blue Velvet, 24 and
Easy Rider.
Hopper made his acting debut on an episode of the Richard Boone television show Medic in 1955 playing a young epileptic. Hopper was then cast in two roles with
James Dean (whom he admired immensely) in Rebel
Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). Dean's death in a 1955 car
accident affected the young Hopper deeply and it was shortly afterwards that he got into a confrontation with veteran director
Henry Hathaway on the film From Hell To Texas. Hopper refused directions for 80
takes over several days. This infamous incident resulted in his being blacklisted from films for several years.
In his book Last Train to Memphis, American popular music historianPeter Guralnick says that in 1956 when Elvis Presley was making
his first film in Hollywood, Dennis Hopper was roommates with fellow actor Nick Adams and the
three became friends and socialized together. Hopper moved to New York and studied at the famous Lee Strasberg acting school. He
appeared in over 140 episodes of television shows such as Bonanza,
The Twilight Zone, The
Defenders, The Big Valley, The
Time Tunnel, The Rifleman and Combat!. Hopper also became an accomplished professional photographer
(he has had many exhibitions of his work). He also was very talented as a painter and a
poet as well as being an enthusiastic collector of Art, particularly Pop
Art. One of the first art works Hopper owned was an early print of Andy Warhol's
Campbell's Soup Cans bought for $75.
Hopper had a supporting role as "Babalugats," the bet-taker in Cool Hand Luke
(1967). Hopper was able to resume acting in mainstream films including The Sons of
Katie Elder (1965) and True Grit (1969), and in both of these films he had
death scenes with John Wayne. During the production of True Grit, he became acquainted
Wayne in earnest. Although the screen legend would regularly (and good-naturedly) assail Hopper for his archliberal social and
political leanings, a genuine kinship developed between the two men.
It was not until he teamed with Peter Fonda and Jack
Nicholson and made Easy Rider that he really shook up the Hollywood
establishment. This film came to represent the generation of the Vietnam War and to this day
is one of the most successful independent films ever made. Hopper won wide acclaim as the director of the film for his
improvisational methods and innovative editing. However, the production was plagued by creative differences and personal acrimony
between Fonda and Hopper, the dissolution of his marriage to Brooke Hayward, and an unwillingness to leave the editor's desk —
all of which could be attributed to accelerating abuse of drugs and alcohol that would prove to be fatally detrimental to the production of his next film.
In 1971, Hopper released The Last Movie. Expecting an accessible follow-up to
Easy Rider, audiences were treated to inscrutable artistic flourishes (the inclusion of "scene missing" cards) and a
hazily existentialist plot that verged on the nonlinear and absurd. After finishing first at the Venice Film Festival, the film was dismissed by audiences and critics alike during its first
domestic engagement in New York City and never entered national release. During the tulmultuous editing process, Hopper ensconced
himself in Taos, New Mexico for nearly a year, publicly cavorting with young women. In between contesting Fonda's rights to the
majority of the residual profits from Easy Rider, he married Michelle Phillips in October 1970. Citing spousal abuse and
his various addictions, she filed for divorce a week after their wedding. This whirlwind of negative publicity, combined with the
failure of The Last Movie, ensured that the former wunderkind became a pariah within the industry, widely regarded as the
New Hollywood's first "drug burnout".
Although he was shunned by the mainstream American film industry, Hopper was able to sustain his lifestyle and a measure of
celebrity by acting in numerous low budget and European films throughout the 1970s as
the archetypical "tormented maniac", including Mad Dog Morgan (1976),
Tracks (1976), and The American
Friend (1977). With Francis Ford Coppola's blockbuster Apocalypse
Now (1979), Hopper returned to prominence as a hypomanic Vietnam-era photojournalist, essentially portraying himself in the
eyes of many viewers and critics. Stepping in for an overwhelmed director, Hopper won praise in 1980 for his directing and acting
in Out of the Blue, the first indication that a fragment of his
creative talents had remained intact.
Immediately thereafter, Hopper starred as an aging freebase-addled rock star in
the low-budget Neil Young-Dean Stockwell
collaboration Human Highway with the new wave group Devo. Production was often delayed by his unreliable behavior. Hopper's character clearly parallels the
then-concurrent problems of David Crosby, who served as the basis for his Billy in Easy
Rider. Peter Biskind states in the New Hollywood history Easy Riders, Raging
Bulls that Hopper's cocaine intake had reached three grams a day by this time period, complemented by an additional thirty
beers, marijuana, and Cuba libres.
After staging a "suicide attempt" (really more of a daredevil act) using 17 sticks of
dynamite at an "art happening" near Houston and later disappearing into the Mexican desert during a particularly extravagant
bender, Hopper entered a drug rehabilitation program in 1983. The
not-entirely-rejuvenated Hopper gave powerful performances in Rumble Fish (1983) and
The Osterman Weekend (1983). However, it was not until he portrayed
the amyl nitrite-huffing, obscenity-screaming Frank Booth in David Lynch's film Blue Velvet (1986) that his career truly
revived. After reading the script, Hopper called Lynch and told him "You have to let me play Frank Booth. Because I am Frank
Booth!" Hopper won critical acclaim and several awards for this role and the same year won an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Hoosiers. It is widely believed that the nomination
was actually in recognition for his work in Blue Velvet, but that the Academy was reticent to recognize his portrayal of
such a vile and irredeemable character.
In 1988, Hopper directed a critically acclaimed film about Los Angeles gangs
called Colors. He has continued to be an important actor, photographer and
director. He was nominated for an Emmy award for the 1991 HBO
films Paris Trout and Doublecrossed (in which he played real life drug smuggler and DEA informant Barry Seal). He also co-starred in the
1994 blockbuster Speed with Keanu Reeves and
Sandra Bullock. He recently contributed to the film 1
Giant Leap with provocative anecdotes on spirituality, unity and culture. In 1995 Hopper played the villain "Deacon"
in Waterworld.
Hopper teamed with Nike in the early 1990s to make a series of successful television commercials . He appeared as a "crazed
referee" in those ads. He portrayed villain Victor Drazen in the first season of the popular 24 drama on the
Fox television network. Hopper also starred in the NBC 2006 television series E-Ring, a drama set at The Pentagon, but the series was cancelled after 14 episodes aired.
On the 2005 Gorillaz album Demon Days, Hopper
performs the spoken word track "Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head." In July 2006, Hopper
appeared in the music video for "Smiley Faces" by Gnarls Barkley, portraying faux music
historian Milton Pawley.
Personal life
Hopper has been married five times and has four children[2]
In 1999, actor Rip Torn filed a defamation lawsuit
against Hopper over a story Hopper told on The Tonight Show with Jay
Leno. Hopper claimed that Torn pulled a knife on him during pre-production of the film
Easy Rider. According to Hopper, Torn was originally cast in the film but was replaced
with Jack Nicholson after the incident. According to Torn's suit, it was actually Hopper
who pulled the knife on him. A judge ruled in Torn's favor and Hopper was ordered to pay $475,000 in damages. Hopper then
appealed but the judge again ruled in Torn's favor and Hopper was required to pay another
$475,000 in punitive damages.[3]
Despite being famous as an actor and director, Hopper sees himself primarily as an artist, and is an accomplished and
much-respected painter, art collector and photographer.
