With Mia Wasikowska in Restless.
Helen Barlow, The Age, reports
Henry Hopper is doing a convincing job of following in the footsteps of the original Easy Rider, writes Helen Barlow.
Given the string of gangsters Dennis ''the Menace'' Hopper played in his later years, it's easy to forget how handsome he was in his youth. His 21-year-old son, Henry, reminds us.
Henry Hopper is the spitting image of his old man as a youngster and, during his father's dying days, he did him proud. Hopper jnr is outstanding in Gus van Sant's new movie, Restless.
Henry is now taking up the family gauntlet, even if playing a death-obsessed teen who meets the terminally ill Mia Wasikowska at a funeral was a little close to home. Restless is dedicated to the memory of his renegade father - who died in May last year from prostate cancer.
''I have a love for art and for film though I resisted being an actor for some time,'' explains Hopper, who was one of the discoveries of this year's Cannes Film Festival.
''I'm realising now that acting is a means of self-expression and is the collaborative kind of work I want to do.''
The third of Dennis's four children (he had one with each of his four wives) and his only son, Henry grew up in Los Angeles, living between the homes of his mother, ballerina Katherine LaNasa, and his father, who also had a residence in New Mexico. Dennis made time to take his son to school whenever he could - but the pair truly bonded only when Henry expressed interest in being an artist in his teens.
Dennis was best known as the wild-man actor from Apocalypse Now and Blue Velvet and the director of Easy Rider but he was a painter with an astute eye for art. He joked that his pop-art collection of early works by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol was worth so much more than he earned from movies.
''Well you know, art only goes up,'' his son muses. ''I always embraced and respected my father's acting but I always saw it as his job. Sometimes I saw it gave him some pain because it was work and I think I avoided it because of that.
''When I got to know him more and more he was developing more as an artist and a lot of our relationship was built really around that … it is very much about having an interconnectedness with creative people and feeling safe in that.''
Henry was living in Berlin in a kind of artists' collective when van Sant, who is renowned for working with new young actors (such as River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, Nicole Kidman, Joaquin Phoenix) heard about him.
''As a person, he seemed really right,'' van Sant says. ''As an actor he was very good. He had done a number of stage plays and had studied at the Actors Studio in Santa Monica. He was a natural.''
Two decades ago, van Sant offered his father a role in My Own Private Idaho but it was the wrong role.
''Dennis said he wanted to play one of the young guys. I had to not call him back,'' van Sant recalls. ''He was probably joking. Before he died, Dennis saw a rough cut of Restless on DVD … and he said Henry is like a younger version of himself.''
Like his dad, Henry was not always angelic, getting in trouble in his early teens as he was ''tearing around'' Venice, California, with his skateboarding friends. ''When I was 15, my parents gave me an ultimatum and I came up with acting classes as a way of staying out of trouble.''
Even so, he came to Restless with hardly any movie experience and was grateful to be acting alongside an old hand such as Wasikowska.
''I don't know what I would have done without Mia,'' he says. ''She is a very, very special person. And Gus, too; I had so much faith and trust immediately. I don't know if I could have given as much as I did because I felt very protected to be able to open up in that way.''
Henry's good friend Elena died during the first week of shooting the film in Portland and he flew back to LA for her funeral. ''The film has been very therapeutic,'' he says.
Wasikowska says she and Henry clicked: '' We have a similar dynamic. Henry is a beautiful actor, very instinctive and intuitive. It was obviously a pivotal moment in his life when he was making this movie. It was a really intense time, given the subject matter, and he did so well. His dad was a really important person to him.''
So was it intimidating having a father who was deemed one of the coolest guys on the planet? ''I love that question!'' Henry enthuses. ''Well, something that he taught me that was good advice was, 'Be cool! Be cool!' ''
Although not the big talker his father was, Henry, with his quiet intensity, is heeding his father's advice.
Henry Hopper is doing a convincing job of following in the footsteps of the original Easy Rider, writes Helen Barlow.
Given the string of gangsters Dennis ''the Menace'' Hopper played in his later years, it's easy to forget how handsome he was in his youth. His 21-year-old son, Henry, reminds us.
Henry Hopper is the spitting image of his old man as a youngster and, during his father's dying days, he did him proud. Hopper jnr is outstanding in Gus van Sant's new movie, Restless.
Henry is now taking up the family gauntlet, even if playing a death-obsessed teen who meets the terminally ill Mia Wasikowska at a funeral was a little close to home. Restless is dedicated to the memory of his renegade father - who died in May last year from prostate cancer.
''I have a love for art and for film though I resisted being an actor for some time,'' explains Hopper, who was one of the discoveries of this year's Cannes Film Festival.
''I'm realising now that acting is a means of self-expression and is the collaborative kind of work I want to do.''
The third of Dennis's four children (he had one with each of his four wives) and his only son, Henry grew up in Los Angeles, living between the homes of his mother, ballerina Katherine LaNasa, and his father, who also had a residence in New Mexico. Dennis made time to take his son to school whenever he could - but the pair truly bonded only when Henry expressed interest in being an artist in his teens.
Dennis was best known as the wild-man actor from Apocalypse Now and Blue Velvet and the director of Easy Rider but he was a painter with an astute eye for art. He joked that his pop-art collection of early works by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol was worth so much more than he earned from movies.
''Well you know, art only goes up,'' his son muses. ''I always embraced and respected my father's acting but I always saw it as his job. Sometimes I saw it gave him some pain because it was work and I think I avoided it because of that.
''When I got to know him more and more he was developing more as an artist and a lot of our relationship was built really around that … it is very much about having an interconnectedness with creative people and feeling safe in that.''
Henry was living in Berlin in a kind of artists' collective when van Sant, who is renowned for working with new young actors (such as River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, Nicole Kidman, Joaquin Phoenix) heard about him.
''As a person, he seemed really right,'' van Sant says. ''As an actor he was very good. He had done a number of stage plays and had studied at the Actors Studio in Santa Monica. He was a natural.''
Two decades ago, van Sant offered his father a role in My Own Private Idaho but it was the wrong role.
''Dennis said he wanted to play one of the young guys. I had to not call him back,'' van Sant recalls. ''He was probably joking. Before he died, Dennis saw a rough cut of Restless on DVD … and he said Henry is like a younger version of himself.''
Like his dad, Henry was not always angelic, getting in trouble in his early teens as he was ''tearing around'' Venice, California, with his skateboarding friends. ''When I was 15, my parents gave me an ultimatum and I came up with acting classes as a way of staying out of trouble.''
Even so, he came to Restless with hardly any movie experience and was grateful to be acting alongside an old hand such as Wasikowska.
''I don't know what I would have done without Mia,'' he says. ''She is a very, very special person. And Gus, too; I had so much faith and trust immediately. I don't know if I could have given as much as I did because I felt very protected to be able to open up in that way.''
Henry's good friend Elena died during the first week of shooting the film in Portland and he flew back to LA for her funeral. ''The film has been very therapeutic,'' he says.
Wasikowska says she and Henry clicked: '' We have a similar dynamic. Henry is a beautiful actor, very instinctive and intuitive. It was obviously a pivotal moment in his life when he was making this movie. It was a really intense time, given the subject matter, and he did so well. His dad was a really important person to him.''
So was it intimidating having a father who was deemed one of the coolest guys on the planet? ''I love that question!'' Henry enthuses. ''Well, something that he taught me that was good advice was, 'Be cool! Be cool!' ''
Although not the big talker his father was, Henry, with his quiet intensity, is heeding his father's advice.
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