Hollywood actor Dennis Hopper, best known for directing and starring in the 1969 cult classic "Easy Rider," died on Saturday at his home in Venice, California, from complications of prostate cancer, a friend told Reuters. Hopper was 74.The hard-living screen icon died at 8:15 a.m. PT, surrounded by family and friends, said the friend, Alex Hitz.
The two-time Oscar nominee, who appeared in more than 100 films, last March got a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, saying he came to Hollywood from his native Kansas at 18, "so that was my college."
"Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from Hollywood," he said. "This has been my home and my schooling."
In a wildly varied career spanning more than 50 years, Hopper appeared alongside his mentor James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Giant" in the 1950s and played maniacs in such films as "Apocalypse Now," "Blue Velvet" and "Speed."
He received two Oscar nominations — for writing "EasyRider" (with co-star Peter Fonda and Terry Southern), and for a rare heartwarming turn as an alcoholic high-school basketball coach in the 1986 drama "Hoosiers."
"Easy Rider," regarded is one of the greatest films of American cinema, helped usher in a new era in which the old Hollywood guard was forced to cede power to young filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.
The low-budget blockbuster, originally conceived by Fonda, introduced mainstream moviegoers to pot-smoking, cocaine-dealing, long-haired bikers.
"We'd gone through the whole '60s and nobody had made a film about anybody smoking grass without going out and killing a bunch of nurses," Hopper told Entertainment Weekly in 2005. "I wanted 'Easy Rider' to be a time capsule for people about that period."
