The cancer spread to his bones and he died on May 29, 2010. Hopper had several artistic pursuits beyond film. Known in the motion picture industry for his anti-establishment. In 2011, Barricade Books published film historian Peter L. Winkler's biography, Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel. I wonder if Hopper saw his exit as a last movie? Looking frail, he began his brief acceptance speech by sardonically thanking the paparazzi for supposedly distracting him and causing him to lose his balance and fall the day before. Actor Dennis Hopper left behind a legacy of movie achievements when he died on May 29, 2010, at age 74 from prostate cancer. And in 1996 he starred in the science fiction comedy Space Truckers directed by Stuart Gordon. I reported back on my progress. Kan., and raised on a nearby farm, Dennis Lee Hopper moved with . She said Taos was "his heart home.". 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 archetypal "tormented maniac", including Mad Dog Morgan (1976), Tracks (1976), and The American Friend (1977). Id rather remember the secretive, serious, focused artist who never fully revealed himself to me and maybe never to anyone. UPDATE: Here's the Associated Press obituary. He worried that one false step might plunge him back into the hell of his 1970s decade. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. The idea was to break through inhibitions in order to become a better artist.. [20], Besides showing drug use on film, it was one of the first films to portray the hippie lifestyle. Market data provided by Factset. [38] He became a prolific photographer, and noted writer Terry Southern profiled Hopper in Better Homes and Gardens as an up-and-coming photographer "to watch" in the mid-1960s. He was 74. ", From that point on, Hopper maintained a frantic work pace, appearing in many forgettable movies and a few memorable ones, including the 1994 hit "Speed," in which he played the maniacal plotter of a freeway disaster. [35] During this period he created the cover art for the Ike & Tina Turner album River Deep Mountain High (released in 1966). On the way, Hopper and Fonda befriend a drunken young lawyer (Jack Nicholson, whom Hopper had resisted casting, in a breakout role), but arouse the enmity of Southern rednecks and are murdered before they can return home. Hopper won wide acclaim as the director for his improvisational methods and innovative editing for Easy Rider. From there he went to Warner Bros., where he made "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Giant" while in his late teens. [16] In 1961, Hopper played his first lead role in Night Tide, an atmospheric supernatural thriller involving a mermaid in an amusement park. Hopper's lawyer argued in the divorce case that his estranged wife's presence was hampering his fight with cancer, but the judge allowed her to continue living in the family's Venice compound with their 6-year-old daughter, Galen. He was a two-time Academy Award nominee, and in March 2010, was honored with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. [72] Surrounded by family, fans, and friendsincluding Jack Nicholson, Viggo Mortensen, David Lynch, and Michael Madsenhe attended its addition to the sidewalk six days later. As far as I could discover, that was a great deal of fiction based on a fragment of fact. UPDATE: Here's the Associated Press obituary. Journalist Ann Hornaday wrote: "With its portrait of counterculture heroes raising their middle fingers to the uptight middle-class hypocrisies, Easy Rider became the cinematic symbol of the 1960s, a celluloid anthem to freedom, macho bravado and anti-establishment rebellion". His credits include no fewer than six films released in 2008 and at least 25 over the past 10 years. I thought the crazier you behaved, the better artist you would be. Hopper and his fourth wife, dancer Katherine LaNasa, had a son, Henry, before divorcing. That was the year I began to notice a ghostly figure nervously hovering at Westside art openings. They had a daughter, Marin, before Hopper's drug-induced violence led to divorce after eight years. [32] He portrayed villain Victor Drazen in the first season of the popular action drama 24. Hopper made a name for himself in the classic films Blue Velvet, Rebel Without a Cause and, most famously, Easy Rider. He appeared as an arrogant young gunfighter, the Utah Kid, in the 1956 episode "Quicksand" of the first hour-long western television series Cheyenne, starring Clint Walker. Though Hopper gave critically acclaimed performances in Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983) and Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend (1983), it was not until he portrayed the gas-huffing, obscenity-screaming villain Frank Booth in David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) that his career truly revived. shaka wear graphic tees is candy digital publicly traded ellen lawson wife of ted lawson is dennis hopper related to william hopper. Hopper also tried his hand at a number of artistic pursuits including photography, sculpting and painting. In 1957 Hopper played thief Abe Larson in another Cheyenne episode titled "The Iron Trail." [46] In 2013, Harper Collins published Hopper: A Journey into the American Dream, a biography by American writer Tom Folsom. And he was broke at that time, Hollywood considered him unemployable. Four years later, Fonda told The Independent that Hopper refused to speak to him prior to his death, and even barred him from the funeral. Its not that he wouldnt; its that he couldnt sign any book contract. [34] Early in his career, he painted and wrote poetry, though many of his works were destroyed in the 1961 Bel Air Fire, which burned hundreds of homes, including his and his wife's, on Stone Canyon Road[35] in Bel Air. In 1995, Hopper played a greedy TV self-help guru, Dr. Luther Waxling in Search and Destroy. Hopper's manager announced in October 2009 that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. [58], On January 14, 2010, Hopper filed for divorce from his fifth wife Victoria Duffy. While funeral arrangements have not been decided, Hopper's wish was to be buried in Taos, New Mexico, his wife said. He deathly feared opening a Pandoras past that might include deeds hed literally forgotten. What went down behind those corrugated steel walls of Dennis Hopper's Venice fortress as he lay dying at age 74? In 1970 he filmed The Last Movie, cowritten by Stewart Stern and photographed by Lszl Kovcs in Peru, and completed production in 1971. Most recently, Mr. Hopper starred in the television series Crash, an adaptation of the Oscar-winning film of the same title. He was tormented and deceitful, funny and knowledgeable, tolerant and tough, intoxicating and toxic. More details soon. The marriage lasted eight days. In the storyline, the Kid gave Cheyenne Bodie no choice but to kill him in a gunfight. Get the best of Fox News' entertainment coverage, right in your inbox. His second marriage, to singer-actress Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, lasted only eight days. In gratitude for resurrecting his career and because, he said, I knew the art world, Hopper asked me to collaborate on his biography. [36] His painting style ranges from abstract impressionism to photorealism and often includes references to his cinematic work and to other artists. He subsequently appeared in over 140 episodes of television shows such as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Petticoat Junction, The Twilight Zone, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The Defenders, The Investigators, The Legend of Jesse James, Entourage, The Big Valley, The Time Tunnel, and Combat!. ", "Work is fun to me," he told a reporter in 1991. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Hopper repeatedly mentioned a knife fight with Rip Torn on the Easy Rider location, but that never happened either. Hopper teamed with Nike in the early 1990s to make a series of television commercials. All was forgiven, at least for a moment, when he collaborated with another struggling actor, Peter Fonda, on a script about two pot-smoking, drug-dealing hippies on a motorcycle trip through the Southwest and South to take in the New Orleans Mardi Gras. ", Hopper made it to the top of the box office in the 1994 hit "Speed," in which he played the maniacal plotter of a freeway disaster. ", Its success prompted studio heads to schedule a new kind of movie: low cost, with inventive photography and themes about a young, restive baby boom generation. The film caught on despite tension between Hopper and Fonda and between Hopper and the original choice for Nicholson's part, Rip Torn, who quit after a bitter argument with the director. The film was a hit at Cannes, netted a best-screenplay Oscar nomination for Hopper, Fonda and Terry Southern, and has since been listed on the American Film Institute's ranking of the top 100 American films. Hopper died Saturday at his home in the Los Angeles beach community of Venice, surrounded by family and friends, family friend Alex Hitz said. [14] In 1993, he played Clifford Worley in True Romance. He remembered his mother: She was wild, very emotional, a screamer and a yeller. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. Anyone can read what you share. He saw a career resurgence in 1986 when he was widely acclaimed for his performances in Blue Velvet and Hoosiers, the latter of which saw him nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The print sold at Christie's, New York, for US$302,500 in January 2011. His last major feature film appearance was in the 2008 film Elegy with Ben Kingsley, Penlope Cruz and Debbie Harry. Shunned by the Hollywood studios, he found work in European films that were rarely seen in the United States. May 29, 2010 -- Dennis Hopper, the director, star and co-writer of "Easy Rider" and an edgy actor in numerous other films, has died at age 74 after a lengthy illness, his production company Easy . He spent much of the 1970s and early 1980s living as an "outcast" in Taos, New Mexico, after the success of Easy Rider. A couple months before his death, he was honored with a star on the. May 17, 1936 Died May 29, 2010 (74) Add to list Nominated for 2 Oscars 23 wins & 17 nominations total Photos 424 Known for Easy Rider 7.3 Billy 1969 Blue Velvet 7.7 Frank Booth 1986 Speed 7.3 Howard Payne 1994 Waterworld 6.3 Deacon 1995 Credits Edit Produced for the Starz cable channel, the show had Mr. Hopper portraying a music producer unhinged by years of drug use. The film caught on despite tension between Hopper and Fonda and between Hopper and the original choice for Nicholson's part, Rip Torn, who quit after a bitter argument with the director. The series starred Chuck Connors and the premiere episode "The Sharpshooter" was written by Sam Peckinpah.[28]. In January 2010, Hopper filed to end his 14-year marriage to Victoria Hopper, who stated in court filings that the actor was seeking to cut her out of her inheritance, a claim Hopper denied. Fine art from an iPhone? He married his fifth wife, Victoria Duffy, who was 32 years his junior, in 1996, and they had a daughter, Galen Grier. Scouted by the studios, Hopper was under contract to Columbia until he insulted the boss, Harry Cohn. With Francis Ford Coppola's blockbuster Apocalypse Now (1979), Hopper returned to prominence as a hyper-manic Vietnam-era photojournalist. In Taos, I met many people who loathed Hopper, and many who remembered him as their hero and champion and friend. Actor Dennis Hopper has died of complications from prostate cancer. And there was a time when I had a lot of energy to display how crazy that was.. In 2003, Hopper was in the running for the dual lead in the indie horror drama Firecracker, but was ousted at the last minute in favor of Mike Patton. [55], Hopper was honored with the rank of commander of France's National Order of Arts and Letters, at a ceremony in Paris. [60] On March 9, 2010, Duffy refused to move out of the Hopper home, despite the court's order that she do so by March 15. He appeared in the first episode of the popular TV series, "The Rifleman" (19581963) as protagonist Vernon Tippet. Also in 1986, Hopper portrayed Lt. Enright in the comedy horror The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. [42] The proceeds of the two-day sale of some 300 pieces from Hopper's collection at Christie's went to his four children.[43].