įollowing the critical and commercial failure of his second film as director, The Last Movie (1971), he worked on various independent and foreign projects – in which he was frequently typecast as mentally disturbed outsiders in such films as Mad Dog Morgan (1976) and The American Friend (1977) – until he found new fame for his role as an American photojournalist in Apocalypse Now (1979). Film critic Matthew Hays wrote "no other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the 1960s than that of Dennis Hopper". Journalist Ann Hornaday wrote: "With its portrait of counterculture heroes raising their middle fingers to the uptight middle-class hypocrisies, Easy Rider became the cinematic symbol of the 1960s, a celluloid anthem to freedom, macho bravado and anti-establishment rebellion". The film earned Hopper a Cannes Film Festival Award for "Best First Work" and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (shared with Fonda and Southern). Hopper made his directorial film debut with Easy Rider (1969), which he and co-star Peter Fonda wrote with Terry Southern. Hopper also began a prolific and acclaimed photography career in the 1960s. In the next ten years he made a name in television, and by the end of the 1960s had appeared in several films, notably Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Hang 'Em High (1968).
He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in Giant (1956). Dennis Lee Hopper (– May 29, 2010) was an American actor and filmmaker.