Actor Dennis Hopper dies after cancer fight

May 30, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES

Dennis Hopper, the maverick director and co-star of the landmark 1969 counterculture film classic “Easy Rider” whose drug- and alcohol-fueled reputation as a Hollywood bad boy preceded his return to sobriety and a career resurgence in the films “Hoosiers” and “Blue Velvet,” died Saturday. He was 74.

A longtime resident of Venice who also was known as a photographer, artist and collector of modern art, Hopper died at his home of complications from prostate cancer, said Alex Hitz, a friend of the family.

A frail-looking Hopper, whose battle with prostate cancer was revealed in October, was able to attend a ceremony for the unveiling of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in late March.

In a more than five- decade acting career that was influenced early on by working with James Dean and studying at the Actors Studio, he made his film debut as one of the high school gang members who menace Dean in the 1955 classic “Rebel Without a Cause.”

Hopper went on to appear in more than 115 films, including “Giant,” “Cool Hand Luke,” “Hang ’Em High,” “True Grit,” “Apocalypse Now,” “The American Friend,” “Rumble Fish,” “Speed,” “True Romance” and “Rivers Edge.”

But it was his role as the long-haired, pot-smoking biker Billy opposite Peter Fonda’s Wyatt (Captain America) in the hit movie “Easy Rider” that gave Hopper his most enduring claim to fame.

The low-budget tale of two bikers on an ultimately tragic cross-country odyssey, “Easy Rider” became a generational touchstone.

The movie, which boasted a star-making performance from a little-known actor named Jack Nicholson as a boozy, small-town lawyer who goes along for the ride and gets his first taste of marijuana, set old-guard Hollywood back on its heels.

“The impact of ‘Easy Rider,’ both on the filmmakers and the industry as a whole, was no less than seismic,” Peter Biskind wrote in his 1998 book “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And-Rock ’N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood.”