Dennis Hopper

Born on May 17, 1936 in Dodge City (Kansas), Dennis Lee Hopper was very interested in all facets of art as a child, when he was dabbling in painting, but he also longed to become an actor. At the age of 19, he was already participating in television series, with small roles in series such as Medic . It was the master Nicolas Ray who offered him the chance to make his big screen debut, first with a small uncredited role in the cult western Johnny Guitar , then with a slightly larger role in Rebel Without a Cause . The protagonist, James Dean , coincided with him again in Gigante, and became a great friend of Hopper, who after his untimely death suffered trauma, and tried to adopt his lifestyle and imitate him in everything. As a result of the shock, he began to have serious problems with alcohol, and came to throw wild parties with the then very young Elvis Presley .

Following a small role as an outlaw in Clash of the Titans , Hopper played Napoleon Bonaparte in The Story of Mankind . Despite his talent, he was a troubled and rebellious young man who drove Henry Hathaway to despair , under whose orders he was filming From Hell to Texas . Apparently, the veteran Hathaway had to repeat a take more than eighty times because Hopper insisted on putting into practice the techniques he had learned those days at the Actor’s Studio, where he had enrolled. Desperate because he was not following his lead, Hathaway yelled at him and swore that he would personally see that he did not work in the cinema again.

For practically a decade, Hopper was exiled from Hollywood, and took refuge in series like Bonanza or In the limits of reality and in movies of series B like The trip , by Roger Corman , a psychotropic film about addicts to LSD that had a screenplay written by Jack Nicholson . Also, during this time, he tried his hand as a painter and photographer and became friends with the artist Andy Warhol .

In the mid-’60s, Hopper returned to Hollywood, where they had forgotten that he was a troubled actor. He first landed small roles in Cool Cool and They Made Two Mistakes . Hathaway reconciled with him, giving him a leading role in True Grit , starring John Wayne , an actor who made a big impression on Hopper, despite a few minor confrontations. The same year that he shot that western, 1969, Hopper surprised locals and strangers with a film that would forever change the foundations of Hollywood, Easy Rider , his directorial debut. This legendary ‘road movie’ is an exhaustive portrait of the generation of May ’68 and the Vietnam War. Peter Fondaand Hopper himself played the leads, two guys who traveled by motorcycle to New Orleans to celebrate the carnival. Along the way, they meet curious characters like the one played by Jack Nicholson. The film was a big hit on the billboards, and Hollywood producers were trying to imitate the formula, looking for movies as low-budget as Easy Rider that would hit young audiences. And yet, Hopper’s life was turned upside down because of his excesses, since he had spent the entire filming drugged, which caused his wife, actress Brooke Hayward ( Six Degrees of Separation ), immediately ask for a divorce. He then was married to Michelle Phillips, singer of The Mamas & The Papas for only 8 days, after which he divorced again. Three more wives complete the risky sentimental life of the actor.

After the success of Easy Rider , Hopper obtained a comfortable budget to shoot The Last Movie , a film about a disastrous shoot in which a stuntman is killed. But the actual filming in Peru was even worse, as Hopper did not stop organizing brutal parties at the hotel, where all kinds of drugs were consumed, to the point that the Peruvian government decided to stop filming. The Last Movie was a box office flop, and Hopper was condemned to a new exile, this time in Europe. There he shot The Other Side of the Wind , a film by Orson Welles that was never released, and he also gave an exemplary interpretation of Tom Ripley, a murderer created by Patricia Highsmith ., in Wim Wenders ‘ masterpiece The American Friend .

Francis Ford Coppola took him to the Philippines to play the deranged photographer following Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now , and later cast him in Rumble Rule . With such a solid filmography, and enormous prestige among critics, one might think that Hopper was raffled off by the great directors, but in reality they fled from him because his drug abuse scared filmmakers even in Hollywood, where they had seen of everything. After injuring himself, because he claimed that he heard screams in his head, he was admitted to a clinic in Los Angeles and decided that the time had come to try to overcome his multiple addictions.

He was offered a suitable role by David Lynch in Blue Velvet , where he was the sadistic gangster Frank Booth, tormenting a singer played by Isabella Rossellini . With this work and his brilliant portrayal of a former alcoholic in Hoosiers (More Than Idols) , Hopper began a new, more mature stage in which he joined the big studio movies. He shot titles such as Strange Blood Bond –Sean Penn ‘s directorial debut– or Point-Blank Love , and even appeared in typical films for all mainstream audiences, such as Speed ​​–Where he was a brilliant villain–, Waterworld ,What a couple of idiots , or The last vote . He did not completely abandon television, as he starred in series such as Crash , based on the film by Paul Haggis , nor directing, as he was responsible for the very interesting Colors (Colours of War) – about two policemen who experience a youth gang war in Los Angeles–, among other unequal titles.