It may be tough to imagine the actor being too comfortable with E-Ring's rather establishment-friendly bent, but the sex-drugs-and-rock-'n'-roll Hopper has come to a very different place politically. He is now an avowed Republican who voted twice for President Bush. ''I made the natural curve that everybody talks about,'' he says. ''I went from the left to the right — and rather gracefully, I think.''
It's not what Hopper might have envisioned as a dope-smoking, Vietnam War-protesting firebrand. Then again, he says, given his legendarily hard-partying ways, ''I never really expected to be 30.''
Hopper was actually 33 when he blew Hollywood's mind by directing and costarring in Easy Rider with Peter Fonda and a then-unknown Jack Nicholson. On the heels of the unexpected hit, the actor's future seemed bright. But when his hallucinatory follow-up, 1971's The Last Movie, was a massive flop, Hopper became persona non grata. Driven by a gargantuan appetite for drugs and drink, he went into a decade-long tailspin. ''The last five years of my abusing I was doing half a gallon of rum with a fifth of rum on the side, 28 beers, and three grams of cocaine a day — and that wasn't getting high, that was just to keep going, man,'' he says with a dark laugh. ''I was a nightmare. I finally just shorted out.''
After some time in rehab, Hopper emerged clean and sober in the mid-'80s and embarked on resurrecting his career — a feat he accomplished with a string of remarkable performances in Hoosiers, River's Edge, and Blue Velvet. No one was more surprised than Hopper. ''I always wanted to get back into some important roles,'' he says. ''But how I got them, I'm not quite sure.'' Though for every True Romance, there was a Waterworld. ''I took work no matter what it was at times, just to keep working,'' he admits. ''I've made a lot of movies that are only shown in Eastern European countries and Fiji.''
Along the way, Hopper became an accomplished photographer and amassed a world-class collection of modern art. ''He has remained interested in the world — not just in his own work but in people, in the things people create,'' says Viggo Mortensen, a close friend. ''That's what makes him an interesting man and an interesting artist.''
Hopper says he doesn't like to look back. But when he does, he can sound amazed and bemused. (''I ended up walking off into the jungle, naked, in the middle of the night, somewhere down near Cuernavaca,'' he recounts of the moment he hit bottom in the early 1980s, while shooting a film in Mexico. ''I was convinced they were listening to my mind and my friends were being gassed....'') Hopper can't explain why it all happened as it did, so he's not expecting anyone else to get it. ''I don't have any idea how people perceive me,'' he says. ''Most of the people in this industry don't have a clue what I do or what I did, including my own lawyer. But that's cool. I know where I am.''
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