Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper was honored with the 2,403rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Leron Gubler, President and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, presided over the ceremony Guests included Viggo Mortensen, Mark Canton, Laurence Fishburne, David Lynch, Johnny Mathis, Jack Nicholson, Danny Trejo, Dwight Yoakum, and Clifton Collins Jr.
6712 Hollywood Boulevard on March 26, 2010
BIOGRAPHY
An acclaimed actor and filmmaker with an iconic and distinctly American voice, Hopper has been twice nominated for an Academy Award: as Best Supporting Actor for his role as an alcoholic father who gets sober to coach his son's basketball team in Hoosiers, and for Best Original Screenplay of the counter-culture road movie Easy Rider, a film he directed, starred in, and co-wrote with Peter Fonda and Terry Southern.
Hopper was born in Dodge City, Kansas, and grew up in San Diego, California. He made a lasting impression as a teenager with his performance in Nicholas Ray's classic Rebel Without a Cause, opposite James Dean and Natalie Wood, quickly following that with an equally revelatory performance in George Stevens' epic Giant. Relocating to New York City where he studied with Lee Strasberg, Hopper starred in such television shows as "The Rifleman," "Naked City" and "The Twilight Zone."
Returning to Hollywood, Hopper forever changed the face of American cinema with the 1969 film Easy Rider. The movie, made for $350,000, went on to gross in excess of $50 million and garnered Hopper the Best New Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Since Easy Rider, Hopper has been a familiar presence both in front of and behind the camera for more than three decades. He has been in excess of 140 television shows and has starred in more than 150 films including most notably Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, River's Edge, Hoosiers, The Indian Runner, True Romance, Speed, Waterworld, Basquiat, and Edtv. He received Golden Globe nominations for his roles in Hoosiers and as Frank Booth in David Lynch's now-classic Blue Velvet.
In 2008 alone, Hopper appeared in such films as Sleepwalking with Charlize Theron; Quentin Tarantino's Hell Ride; Elegy with Penelope Cruz; Kevin Costner's Swing Vote with Kelsey Grammer; and Wim Wenders's The Palermo Shooting. Other recent film projects for Hopper include the upcoming adventure comedy Alpha and Omega, in which he stars with Hayden Panettiere and Christina Ricci; comedy An American Carol with Kelsey Grammer; and horror thriller Forever with Edward Furlong.
Hopper received the prestigious CIDALC award at the Venice Film Festival for the movie-industry feature The Last Movie, in which he starred, co-wrote, and directed in. He also directed the gang-war crime drama Colors, starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall; action thriller Catchfire, in which he starred with Jodie Foster; and crime drama The Hot Spot, starring Don Johnson and Virginia Madsen.
On television, Hopper has appeared on HBO's Emmy award-winning "Entourage," as well as on the acclaimed series "24"; "Las Vegas" with James Caan; the USA Networks feature The Last Ride; received an Emmy nomination for starring in Paris Trout; and he co-starred opposite Benjamin Bratt in the Jerry Bruckheimer/Warner TV produced NBC series
"E-Ring," during 2005-2006. Most recently he starred in "Crash," a Starz original drama series inspired by the Oscar-winning movie. The series, based loosely on the Academy Award®-winning film, has Hopper taking on the role of successful Los Angeles record producer Ben Cendars, who still lives his life in the fast lane. The critically-praised second season of Crash will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray in July from Anchor Bay Entertainment.
In addition to acting and directing, Hopper is an internationally-known photographer and painter, with retrospective exhibitions in 2001 at the Stedlejik Museum in Amsterdam and The MAK in Vienna. The most important exhibition of his artistic career was in 2007 at The State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, with a photographic exhibition following at The Manege in Moscow, Russia. In October of 2008, he received the prestigious honor of being named a Commander in France's National Order Of Arts and Letters with the opening of an extensive film and art retrospective at La Cinematheque Francais in Paris. This exhibition moved to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in November of 2009.