Dennis Hopper

Book excerpt: One of America's most intriguing show business luminaries and true rebels, Dennis Hopper's amazing life was a roller coaster series of triumphs and failures. Always intent on proving his genius and leaving a legacy, the Emmy winning and Oscar-nominated Hopper acted in more than 115 movies and four TV series, directed seven films, and passionately pursued an artist's life as a photographer and creator and collector of modern art, embracing the work of artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein before the label "pop art" was even coined. Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel explores Hopper's life from his lonely childhood in Kansas, where he became determined to win the affection of others by becoming a great artist, to his often drug-fueled days and nights in Hollywood and his spiritual home in Taos, New Mexico.