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The death of film star Peter Fonda, one of the icons of 1960s Hollywood film for his role in Easy Rider, has been announced, he had been suffering from lung cancer. He followed his father Henry Fonda into the acting business, as his sister Jane Fonda would, starting out in television before making his feature debut in teen comedy Tammy and the Doctor, but it was the counterculture where his heart lay, so soon he was appearing in Roger Corman movies The Wild Angels and The Trip, along with Spirits of the Dead for Roger Vadim (Jane's then husband), but it was the Dennis Hopper film Easy Rider that cemented his fame. There he played a hippy biker alongside Hopper and Jack Nicholson in a film that exploded onto the scene and shook up the world, much in the way many things did in 1969.
After that, Fonda's career never quite hit those heights again, but he remained a regular presence on our screens right up to his death. In 1971 he directed The Hired Hand, a beautiful-looking Western, and followed it with bleak sci-fi Idaho Transfer and Brooke Shields vehicle Wanda Nevada, but the acting continued with roles in many a cult favourite: The Last Movie, car chase epic Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Satanist action flick Race with the Devil, 92 in the Shade, Fighting Mad (with a bow and arrows as his weapon), Outlaw Blues, The Cannonball Run, Split Image (as a cult leader), Certain Fury, Deadfall, Love and a .45, Nadja, Escape from L.A., Grace of My Heart, Oscar-nominated for Ulee's Gold, The Limey (his best performance in his later years), Ghost Rider and 3.10 to Yuma, among many others. A gracious star, committed to progressive causes, who will always be connected to a complex nostalgia for the 1960s, he was the father of 90s star Bridget Fonda. |
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