Biografia

Was tied up and pistol-whipped at his home in L.A. after a robbery. The thieves then took off in the actor's car, but were soon apprehended after the car was traced by a tracking device. Stanton suffered only minor injuries.

Critic Roger Ebert so admired him that he created the "Stanton-Walsh Rule," which states that "no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad." Ebert later admitted that Un piccolo sogno (1989), in which Stanton appeared, was a "clear violation" of this rule.

Was in a relationship with Rebecca De Mornay from 1981 to 1983.

Prior to 1971, he was credited in films and on TV as Dean Stanton so as to avoid any confusion with character actor Harry Stanton, both of whom would appear together in the "Petticoat Junction" episode One of Our Chickens Is Missing (1969). Harry Dean Stanton later costarred in Il miglio verde (1999), which has a character named Dean Stanton.

He has appeared in five films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: La conquista del West (1962), Nick mano fredda (1967), Strada a doppia corsia (1971), Il padrino - Parte II (1974) and Alien (1979).

I've been rather like a cat. I'm finicky and I've done a lot of things, and made career choices, missed meetings and so forth that would have made me a much bigger actor, I think. But, by the same token, that would have demanded more of my time, too.

[on his role in Paris, Texas (1984)] The whole film evolved on a very organic level. It almost had a documentary feel to it. It wasn't odd to be in the lead, I took the same approach as I would to any other part. I play myself as totally as I possibly can. My own Harry Dean Stanton act . . . I don't know whatever happened to Travis. I'd say . . . it's me. Still searching for liberation, or enlightenment, for lack of a better way to put it, and realizing that it might happen, it might not.

I've always been a singer; it's not new to me. I've been singing since I was a child. I've always had a guitar and a harmonica and I played drums in high school -- in a marching band, anyway. I like different kinds of music and I'm exploring them: ballads, blues, blues-rock, country rock, whatever. I'm just focusing on singing a lot so I can get good at it. But don't say I play "country music." It's just another label, like "character actor." One term simply can't say it all.

I'm a late bloomer. It's just a matter of how you evolve; of what your pace is. Hopefully, the older you get the more you grow. So, that has been my speed, the beat of my drum. I march to the beat of a different drum -- you'll pardon me for using this expression.

Early on the whole point of acting was mostly getting a job and then the experience of doing it. But when I did Le colline blu (1966) with Jack Nicholson in 1965 I discovered there was more to it than that. It was a key film for me because of that. Jack told me not to do anything, just let the wardrobe do the acting. It was a great revelation that became an acting principle. To be rather than to do. You have to behave on screen as much as you do in real life. You don't kill anyone in life, but you understand the anger that may bring it about.