Dennis Hopper: Easy Rider Rides Again

"I thought I'd be dead before I was 30. Turning 40 stunned me. Fifty is a major miracle, and I think I may even make 70." So say other men who have just rounded the half-century mark, but Dennis Hopper is neither joking nor exaggerating. He is telling the sober truth. For a man whose name was once synonymous with drugs and booze to have survived to the age of 50 -- and have the audacity even to contemplate trying for the standard threescore and ten -- is no minor accomplishment. It is a megamiracle worthy of a Hollywood movie.

Or, to be precise, nine Hollywood movies, the number he has appeared in over the past two years, making him one of the busiest actors in a town that twice blackballed him. "When you're hot you're hot," says his friend Jack Nicholson, whom Hopper helped convert from a featured player to a star with their 1969 film Easy Rider. "As an actor Dennis stands out because of his edge, his sincerity, the honesty he conveys. But Dennis also paints. He takes pictures. He's got an extremely fine eye for life. He's a great appreciator with a great vision. And he does things his way."

Not all of Hopper's new films are done his way. Some, like last year's My Science Project and last summer's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, are best left off the resume. But one film -- David Lynch's Blue Velvet -- cannot be dismissed. An illustrated guide to Krafft-Ebing, Blue Velvet is perhaps the first film since 1972's Last Tango in Paris to scandalize its audience. At the end people are as likely to erupt in boos as to burst into applause.

Hopper plays Frank Booth, a murderer, maimer, drug dealer, champion cusser, beer guzzler, helium snorter and Roy Orbison fan. Chiefly, though, Frank is a psychopathic sadist who tortures and humiliates a nightclub singer (Isabella Rossellini) for his sexual pleasure. "When I got the part, I wanted to reassure David that I could handle the role, that I understood the character," says Hopper. "I called him up and said, 'I am Frank.' I've been told that that remark caused the other actors some consternation."

That remark, yes -- plus a not altogether undeserved reputation as the Wild Man of Hollywood; Hopper has been shocking and irritating movie people for more than 30 years. Born in Dodge City, Kans., he achieved success at 18 when a TV role brought offers of contracts from seven studios. "I believed I was the best actor I knew at my age," he says. "That is, until I saw James Dean % on the set of Rebel Without a Cause. I realized I didn't know anything. I wanted to know his secret. 'Don't act it,' he said. 'Don't indicate. Just do it.' " Do it Hopper did, in Rebel, Giant and his first downfall, From Hell to Texas. Director Henry Hathaway wanted him to act one way, Hopper wanted to act another, and after 80 grueling takes of one scene, Hathaway won. Hopper was tagged as an uncooperative actor. He was 21, and his movie career was over -- for the moment.