Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper personified the disaffected counterculture of the Vietnam era with his box office success, Easy Rider (1969). The film showcased his talents as an actor and a director, and showed the movie industry that marketing to young audiences was lucrative. Hopper was born in Kansas in 1936 and began acting at an early age in such films as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), where he befriended James Dean. He studied at the Actors Studio for a time, but began to earn a reputation as being difficult to work with. After a combative disagreement with cast and crew on the set of From Hell to Texas, Hopper had trouble finding work with the major studios. After the success of Easy Rider, Hopper fell into a funk of drug use and instability - an image which was not helped by his unhinged but brilliant appearance as a crazed photojournalist in Apocalypse Now (1979). It was not until his excellent supporting role in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) that Hopper started to revive his career as an actor and director. His role as an alcoholic assistant coach in Hoosiers (1986) garnered him an Academy Award Nomination and his directing work on the gang drama Colors (1988) also received positive reviews. He has not relinquished the character role of deranged bad guy however, playing it to the hilt in Speed (1994) and Waterworld (1995). Dennis Hopper has appeared as William S. Burroughs in the Beat documentary The Source, as well as in the biopic Basquiat. Hopper is an avid collector of Pop art and an accomplished photographer.
