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The
odyssey of Dennis Hopper has been one of Hollywood's longest,
strangest trips. A onetime teen performer, he went through
a series of career metamorphoses -- studio pariah, rebel
filmmaker, drug casualty, and comeback kid -- before finally
settling comfortably into the role of character actor par
excellence, with a rogues' gallery of killers and freaks
unmatched in psychotic intensity and demented glee. Along
the way, Hopper defined a generation, documenting the shining
hopes and bitter disappointments of the hippie counterculture
and bringing their message to movie screens everywhere.
By extension, he spearheaded a revolt in the motion picture
industry, forcing the studio establishment to acknowledge
a youth market they'd long done their best to deny.
Born May 17, 1936 in Dodge City, Kansas, Hopper began acting
during his teen years, and made his professional debut on
the TV series Medic. In 1953 he made his film bow in Nicholas
Ray's cult-favorite Western Johnny Guitar, and two years
later reunited with the director in the classic Rebel Without
a Cause, appearing as a young tough opposite James Dean.
Hopper and Dean became close friends during filming, and
also worked together on 1956's Giant. After Dean's tragic
death, it was often remarked that Hopper attempted to fill
his friend's shoes by borrowing much of his persona, absorbing
the late icon's famously defiant attitude and becoming so
temperamental that his once-bright career quickly began
to wane.
Seeking roles far removed from the stereotypical 'troubled
teens' which previously dotted his resume, Hopper began
training with the Actors Studio. However, on the set of
Henry Hathaway's From Hell to Texas he so incensed cast
and crew with his insistence upon multiple takes for his
improvisational techniques -- the reshoots sometimes numbering
upwards of 100 -- that he found himself a Hollywood exile.
He spent much of the next decade mired in "B"-movies,
if he was lucky enough to work at all. Producers considered
him such a risk that upon completing 1960's Key Witness
he did not reappear on-screen for another three years. With
a noteworthy role in Hathaway's 1965 John Wayne western
The Sons of Katie Elder, Hopper made tentative steps towards
a comeback. He then appeared in a number of psychedelic
films, including 1967's The Trip and the following year's
Monkees feature Head, and earned a new audience among anti-establishment
viewers
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