Dennis Hopper, unconventional and iconoclastic director and actor passed away aged 74 in May after battling prostrate cancer. He represented not the archetypal ‘cool’ rebel, but the man falling apart, the mess motivated by drugs and alcohol. He was the grizzled anti-hero, the snarling villain and the faithless veteran. His contribution to not only cinema but also rebellious popular culture is seismic and undeniable.

After a formal acting background of Shakespeare, Hopper spent his early career enamoured by his Rebel Without A Cause co-star James Dean. In the wake of Dean’s tragic 1955 death in a car crash, Hopper returned to acting education and in 1969 directed and starred alongside Peter Fonda and a young Jack Nicholson in the infamous Easy Rider. Now regarded by many as the ultimate social commentary on ‘60s non-conformity and ingrained American prejudice, Easy Rider cost around $360 000 to make and took over $19 million on release. It remains Hopper’s innovatively directed swan song to those left angry and disillusioned by the vacuous lie that was the American Dream, and it struck a chord with the young revolutionary audience. Even the very outfits of Wyatt and Billy represent the flip-side of American culture, moustachioed Billy clad in buckskin complete with cowboy hat representing the crushed culture of the Native American Indians, and Wyatt resplendent in stars and stripes emblazoned leather, symbolising the patriotic oppressors.

Hopper rejected the American Dream vehemently, living by his own rules at his own expense. John Wayne famously masterminded Hopper’s return into Hollywood after hiring him for a role in The Sons of Katie Elder, a brave gamble given that Hopper had alienated and angered many with his increasingly erratic and tempestuous drug fuelled behaviour. In 1986 he won the role of Frank Booth, notorious addict and rapist in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Hopper’s flagging career was revived with the huge critical acclaim gained for his portrayal of Booth, reportedly phoning Lynch after reading the script and stating "You have to let me play Frank Booth. Because I am Frank Booth!"

Hopper’s cinematic career both in front of and behind the camera was a notorious mixed bag, from mainstream successes like Speed, Blue Velvet and True Romance to high-octane flops Waterworld and Super Mario Brothers. His role as a crazed photojournalist documenting the Vietnam War in Apocalypse Now was based on real life journalist Sean Flynn, son of Errol, who was captured by guerrilla forces in Cambodia during 1970 and never heard from again. Hopper brought a frenzied energy to roles, grappling the inner demons of the many disturbed characters he portrayed with a measured assurance – their problems were his own.

As an uneasy icon, Hopper will always be remembered for his problematic nature and, to say the least, difficult relations with women and intoxicants. During a period in a rehabilitory institution Hopper was given antipsychotic drugs, which induced a form of temporary Parkinson’s disease for four months. He went through spells of addiction and sobriety, ricocheting between hell and a hard place with a reckless abandon unfathomable to today’s sterilised Hollywood. Without Easy Rider, there would have been no cinematic retelling of Hunter S Thompson’s semi-autobiographical 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Prior to the 1998 release, when asked who would play Thompson in a film version, Thompson himself expressed his desire for Hopper, a role that eventually went to Johnny Depp.
Thompson recalls the ‘60s as “fast and dangerous times, and we lived in fast and dangerous ways.” This could well be the summary of Hopper’s life, a man who was truly born to be wild.