A lifelong source of anguish: the one role Dennis Hopper regrets missing out on the most
As an actor prone to descending into the throes of drug-addled madness, Dennis Hopper doesn’t stand out as a star who’d go through their life and career harbouring a huge amount of regrets.
After all, he was effectively blacklisted by Hollywood on more than one occasion after running afoul of filmmakers and becoming a liability due to his fondness for getting shitfaced on whatever substance was close to hand, but he always managed to bounce back and rehabilitate his career.
One of the faces of the ‘New Hollywood’ movement and counterculture cinema in general, Hopper lived up to those ideas on and offscreen. When he wasn’t acting, he was most likely to be found getting into ridiculous scrapes full of enough narcotics to kill a horse, and he wasn’t averse to carrying out his duties as a thespian when completely off his tits, either.
He still enjoyed a remarkable career, though, even if an argument can be made that he never truly lived up to his early potential. During the formative years of his career, Hopper shared the screen with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, worked with John Wayne in The Sons of Katie Elder, lent support to Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in Gunfight at the OK Corral, and filled an uncredited voice role in Marlon Brando’s Sayonara.
All of those films were released within a decade of his screen debut, but there was one major missed opportunity that Hopper rued for the remainder of his days. Almost 50 years after the movie hit cinemas, the Easy Rider and Blue Velvet star didn’t hesitate when The Guardian asked him to name the single biggest disappointment of his entire professional life.
Legendary filmmaker Elia Kazan’s 1961 drama Splendor in the Grass starred Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood as high school sweethearts whose relationship is placed under the increasing strain of familial expectation. Winning an Academy Award for ‘Best Original Screenplay’, it was both Beatty’s first feature and an announcement that a fast-rising star was in the industry’s midst.
Even after all he’d seen and done, nothing stung Hopper more than “not getting the part Warren did in Splendor in the Grass when I was about 18.” That shows just how deeply he was affected by not landing the part of Bud Stamper because even rubbing ‘The Duke’ the wrong way and making an enemy of Wayne’s close collaborator Henry Hathaway were treated like water off a duck’s back.
Could things have turned out differently for Hopper had he been the one leading Splendor in the Grass? It’s hard to say, but his first starring role in Night Tide was released the very same year, and it wouldn’t be unfair to say it didn’t quite do the same for his standing as the one that got away did for Beatty’s.
