Biografie

Was laid to rest in Ranchos De Taos, New Mexico on June 2, 2010. His son, Henry Hopper read from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and the funeral was attended by Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda and Val Kilmer.

In 1999, he, his young son, Henry, and two buddies were in Jamaica, heading to a golf course to play a few holes. As they drove through a small village, a speeding truck barreled head-on into their car. Hopper's friends were badly injured in the crash -- broken legs, head traumas -- but Hopper climbed out of the passenger seat without a scratch. He pulled Henry, then 10 years old, from the backseat, covered in splattered blood, also eerily unhurt. "At that point, I really thought, maybe there is a force looking out for me, because I can't figure out how we survived," Hopper said.

James Dean learned he had an interest in photography when they worked together, and encouraged him to pursue it as an alternative to just being an actor. Hopper published a book of photos in the late 1980s, including pictures of stars he had known, and thanked Dean.

After staging a "suicide attempt" (really more of a daredevil act) in a coffin using 17 sticks of dynamite during an "art happening" at the Rice University Media Center (filmed by professor and documentary filmmaker Brian Huberman), and later disappearing into the Mexican desert during a particularly extravagant bender, Hopper entered a drug rehabilitation program in 1983.

Belongs to the Top 100 collectors of modern art. Was the first buyer of one of Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup can paintings before anyone else took them seriously.

[1997]: Like all artists I want to cheat death a little and contribute something to the next generation.

In the 50s, when me and Natalie Wood and James Dean and Nick Adams and Tony Perkins (Anthony Perkins) suddenly arrived... God, it was a whole group of us that sort of felt like that earlier group - the John Barrymores, Errol Flynns, Sinatras, Clifts - were a little farther out than we were... So we tried to emulate that lifestyle. For instance, once Natalie and I decided we'd have an orgy. And Natalie says "O.K., but we have to have a champagne bath." So we filled the bathtub full of champagne. Natalie takes off her clothes, sits down in the champagne, starts screaming. We take her to the emergency hospital. That was *our* orgy, you understand?

[Quote from 2001]: I've been sober now for 18 years. With all the drugs, psychedelics and narcotics I did, I was [really] an alcoholic. Honestly, I only used to do cocaine so I could sober up and drink more. My last five years of drinking was a nightmare. I was drinking a half-gallon of rum with a fifth of rum on the side, in case I ran out, 28 beers a day, and three grams of cocaine just to keep me moving around. And I thought I was doing fine because I wasn't crawling around drunk on the floor.

I've been a Republican since Reagan. I voted for Bush and his father. I don't tell a lot of people, because I live in a city where somebody who voted for Bush is really an outcast.

I should have been dead ten times over. I've thought about that a lot. I believe in miracles. It's an absolute miracle that I'm still around.