17 Portraits of a Young and Handsome Dennis Hopper in the 1950s and 1960s

Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker, and visual artist. He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in Giant (1956).

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).

Hopper made his directorial film debut with Easy Rider (1969), which he and co-star Peter Fonda wrote with Terry Southern. 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). 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.” Film critic Matthew Hays wrote “no other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the 1960s than that of Dennis Hopper.”

Below are some vintage portraits of Dennis Hopper when he was very young in the 1950s and 1960s: