Dennis Hopper spent his early career displaying his contempt for Hollywood studios and directors before besting them at their own game with his low-budget blockbuster, Easy Rider, which he directed, co-wrote, and starred in. Hopper followed that feat with an orgy of drugs and self-destruction, before making a stunning comeback as a character actor in midlife.
Born in Dodge City, Kan., Hopper was raised on a farm. As a child, he was told his father had been killed in World War II. In fact, his father, who later returned alive, was working as a U.S. intelligence officer, said The Hollywood Reporter. Showing an early talent for painting, Hopper took art lessons from painter Thomas Hart Benton. In 1950, the family moved to San Diego, where Hopper landed his first stage role. By the time he was 21 he had appeared in such acclaimed films as Rebel Without a Cause, Giant, and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
But “the gruff, plainspoken, often explosive actor” quickly developed a reputation as being “difficult,” said Variety. That got him relegated to supporting roles in middling films. While filming From Hell to Texas with director Henry Hathaway, Hopper is said to have gone through more than 80 takes before finally doing a scene Hathaway’s way. “I thought the crazier you behaved,” he later explained, “the better artist you would be.”
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After his abrasive ways alienated Hollywood, Hopper studied in New York with Lee Strasberg, who had previously coached Hopper’s idol, James Dean. He regained a foothold in Hollywood with his 1961 marriage to Brooke Hayward, the daughter of producer/agent Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan. But “with 1969’s Easy Rider,” said The Boston Globe, “he showed the entire industry who was boss.” The Oscar-nominated tale of a drug-fueled biker trip “spoke blearily to a mass discontent” among youth, becoming a “cultural touchstone.” Hopper himself became proof that the ’60s were truly dangerous.
In the early 1970s, he “retreated with a cadre of hippies to Peru to shoot The Last Movie, a hallucinogenic film about the making of a movie,” said The New York Times. “Intense drug and alcohol use” sent him spiraling out of control. He moved to Taos, N.M., and worked sporadically, memorably playing a crazed photographer in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, in which he mumbled ad libs. Hopper’s paranoia and appetite for drugs and gunplay soon landed him in an asylum.
After becoming sober in the 1980s, Hopper revitalized his career once more, giving a blistering portrayal of evil in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and winning his second Oscar nomination for his portrayal of an alcoholic basketball coach in Hoosiers. He took virtually any part offered, while building an impressive art collection and winning critical acclaim for his own photography. Hopper was married five times, including once for eight days to singer Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. “The first seven days were pretty good,” he said.
