Dennis Hopper Biography

The image of actor Dennis Hopper as a wild and intense Hollywood 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 — most notably the counterculture landmark Easy Rider.

Dennis Hopper got started in the movies in the mid-1950s, playing troubled youngsters in 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).

Hopper directed and starred in 1969’s Easy Rider with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson. The film, a violent parable about young bikers on a road trip across the American Southwest, was a box office success and steered Hollywood toward counterculture marketing.

During the 1970s, Dennis 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). After that his most memorable role was as the wily, techno-savvy villain in Speed (1994, starring Keanu Reeves), but also popped up in independent films and spots on TV, including roles 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).

Dennis Hopper died of prostate cancer in 2010, two months after getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.