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 The
common opinion in Hollywood is that the first half of Dennis
Hopper's life was ruined by working with James Dean (in Rebel Without a
Cause and Giant). When Dean was killed, Hopper seemed to absorb all his
friend's causeless rebellion, but not all of his charm. Directors
considered him a temperamental pain, and it took years before he and
his pal, Peter Fonda, turned a $400,000 investment into the $40 million
counterculture classic Easy Rider.
Hopper, who directed, acted, and co-wrote the script,
next made The Last Movie, which was so self indulgently awful and
druggy that it was the last movie anyone let him direct for ten years.
Divorced from Brooke (Haywire) Hayward, stoned and drunk, he hung out
in Taos augmenting his reputation as a wild man. He was inspired, to
say the least, by his Apocalypse Now role, in 1979. A year later, he
appeared in a small Canadian film; he was asked to take over as
director, and Out of the Blue actually came in on schedule. By 1986, he
had sobered up, and in 1989 he married a much younger woman. It didn't
last, but, in his '50s, he did become a father again. His performances
in Blue Velvet and Hoosiers were among the best of his career. Two
years later, he directed Colors quite respectably. No one tops
over-the-top Hopper in the realm of menace; his gallery of middle-aged
oddballs, freaks, and psychos is usually worth the price of admission.
Dennis was born on May 17, 1936 and lives with his
current wife,
Victoria Duffy and he has three children, Marin (daughter of Brooke
Hayward), Ruthana (daughter of Daria Halprin) and Henry Lee (son of
Katherine LaNasa).
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