Dennis Hopper’s five most insane bouts of drug-addled madness
Few actors have had as crazy lives as Dennis Hopper. He was a man who truly didn’t have any inhibitions, and for that reason, he garnered quite a reputation in Hollywood. If he wasn’t hosting orgies or doing the Russian Dynamite Death Chair Act, Hopper was probably snorting something and waking up somewhere else.
The actor loved drugs to the point that they largely dictated his life. He was even paid in cocaine when he starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, finding more use for the substance than actual cash (much of which he presumably would have blown on getting high). There are so many stories about Hopper’s drug use that seem simply unbelievable, but he really did get himself into some of the strangest situations imaginable during the course of his addiction.
It is hard to comprehend that Hopper was able to become a successful actor due to the fact that he was always on something, but he possessed an innate skill, it seemed. In fact, Hopper often used his experience with drug addiction to shape his performances.
For example, in Easy Rider, which he also directed, drug use is the focal point of the film, with Hopper encouraging the use of drugs on set to achieve his desired results. Years later, when he appeared in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet as the substance-huffing psychopath Frank Booth, he once again channelled his knowledge of drug use and its effects to create a convincing character.
From shooting trees after doing acid to the entire production of The Last Movie, here are five of Hopper’s most insane bouts of drug-addled madness.
Dennis Hopper’s five maddest stories:
Snorting a woman’s ashes
During the making of Easy Rider, Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jake Nicholson were all on a lot of drugs, to put it lightly. The film, a countercultural masterpiece about the dying days of the American hippie era where freedom appears futile, sees the characters do their fair share of drugs as they traverse the country.
However, in a moment of desperation, the trio began searching for drugs while they were at BBS, a production company. They found some powder to snort, doing so in a drug-riddled daze, only to discover that they had just consumed the ashes of a woman who was married to one of BBS’s executives.
Easy Rider drug trip scene
Speaking of Easy Rider, Hopper filmed one of his most memorable scenes from the movie in a graveyard, where an acid trip occurs. Alongside Fonda, Toni Basil, and Karen Black, Hopper took LSD among the gravestones to make the drug trip scene appear more realistic, and to many, it is one of the most authentic depictions of such in cinema.
As unnerving clips of the characters experiencing their trip cut across the scene with a prayer being read over the top, you can feel the true horror of the sequence. What makes it even worse, however, is the fact that Hopper allegedly convinced Fonda to talk to the statue of Madonna as though it was his mother who had killed herself when he was just ten.
The Last Movie’s drug-fuelled orgies
When Hopper named his second feature film The Last Movie, he seemed to accidentally curse himself. While it wasn’t actually his last film, it was his last for a while, as the reception of the feature was so poor that he didn’t make anything for several years. Part of the reason the movie turned out bad was because the production saw Hopper and his crew enjoying a wide array of drugs and indulging in orgies.
Hopper claimed that this style of production actually helped to get the film made, but as the finished result suggests, the filmmaker might have been thinking a little too optimistically about that. Filming took place in Peru, where many cast members were too busy snorting lines of cocaine to know what was going on.
Wandering naked through a Mexican jungle
While Hopper was filming Jungle Warriors in Mexico, he ended up doing so much acid (alongside lots of alcohol, too) that he experienced something that you can only imagine happening in a movie. The actor took all of his clothes off and ventured out into a jungle, resulting in the police having to come and find him.
“I was making a movie, but I never made it to the set,” he told The Guardian. “They found me running around the jungle naked. Before that, at Mexico City airport, I thought I was in the middle of a movie and walked out on the wing. I was out of my mind. It was around then I decided it was time to get into rehab. My liver, my body, my brain were all shot”.
Mistaking a tree for a bear
We all know that acid can have rather wild effects, and even Hopper, the king of frequent substance use, had his fair share of frightening moments while under the influence. He once took so much acid that he wandered towards a tree and, thinking that it was a bear, began shooting it with a gun.
Of course, this story can only end one way. Hopper was arrested and thrown in jail temporarily. It seems as though the most seasoned drug users aren’t immune from a bad trip from time to time; unluckily for Hopper, all of his were documented.
