Harry Dean Stanton Dies

[Admin]

deadline.com/2017/09/harry-dean-stanton-dead-twin-peaks-big-love-pretty-in-peak-1202170886/

Harry Dean Stanton Dies: Big-Screen Veteran & ‘Big Love’ Patriarch Was 91

Harry Dean Stanton, whose long career ranged from 1950s Westerns to this year’s Twin Peaks and Lucky, died today of natural causes at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his agent John S. Kelly told Deadline. He was 91.

Stanton is perhaps best known to younger audiences as Roman Grant, the oily patriarch of a polygamist family in HBO’s 2000s series Big Love, and Carl Rudd, owner of the Fat Trout trailer park in David Lynch’s Showtime revival of Twin Peaks and the 1992 prequel to the original series.



MORE TO COME…

[Admin]

variety.com/2017/film/news/harry-dean-stanton-dead-dies-big-love-twin-peaks-1202560703/



Harry Dean Stanton, ‘Big Love,’ ‘Twin Peaks’ Star, Dies at 91

Harry Dean Stanton, the actor with a gaunt, bedraggled look who labored in virtual obscurity for decades until a series of roles increased his visibility, including his breakthrough in Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas,” died of natural causes Friday in Los Angeles. He was 91.

The actor was also known for his roles in “Twin Peaks,” “Big Love,” “Pretty in Pink” and “Repo Man.”

He had a high-profile role as manipulative cult leader Roman Grant on HBO polygamy drama “Big Love,” which ran from 2006-11, and recently appeared as Carl Rodd in the “Twin Peaks” revival on Showtime.

His most recent film, “Lucky,” about an atheist who comes to terms with his own mortality, is set to be released by Magnolia on Sept. 29.

In 1984, when he turned 58, he not only starred in the Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” — his first role ever as leading man — but in Alex Cox’s popular cult film “Repo Man.” (That year he also had a small role in John Milius’ “Red Dawn,” shouting “Avenge me! Avenge me!” to his sons, played by Charlie Sheen and Patrick Swayze, after being captured by Soviet troops invading America.)

“Paris, Texas,” penned by Sam Shepard, was the darling of the Cannes Film Festival, capturing not only the Palme d’Or but other juried awards as well. Stanton played Travis, who reconnects, after a fashion, with his brother, played by Dean Stockwell, after being lost for four years. Stanton’s performance in the film was not so much powerful as it was intriguingly, sometimes hauntingly, absent.

Roger Ebert said, “Stanton has long inhabited the darker corners of American noir, with his lean face and hungry eyes, and here he creates a sad poetry.”

In the cheerfully bizarre “Repo Man,” he played the boozy repo-biz veteran who takes young punk Emilio Estevez under his wing but provides at-best nebulous guidance: “A repo man’s life is always intense,” or “The more you drive, the less intelligent you get.”

In 1986, Stanton hit the mainstream when he played Molly Ringwald’s unemployed father in “Pretty in Pink.” Later in the 1980s he played a fiery Paul/Saul in Martin Scorsese’s controversial 1988 effort “The Last Temptation of Christ,” but the actor was among those in the film criticized by many as miscast.

Later film roles included a pair of David Lynch films in the early 1990s, “Wild at Heart” and “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me”; Bob Rafelson’s “Man Trouble,” with Nicholson; “The Mighty,” with Gena Rowlands and Sharon Stone; “The Green Mile”; Sean Penn’s “The Pledge”; Nick Cassavetes’ “Alpha Dog”; and Lynch’s “Inland Empire.”



Stanton was close friends with Jack Nicholson — Stanton was best man at Nicholson’s 1962 wedding, and they lived together for more than two years after Nicholson’s divorce — and the character actor’s first step in emerging from obscurity was a part written by Nicholson for him in the 1965 Western “Ride the Whirlwind.” Stanton played the leader of an outlaw gang; Nicholson told him to “let the wardrobe do the acting and just play yourself.” “After Jack said that, my whole approach to acting opened up,” Stanton told Entertainment Weekly.

In the early ’70s Stanton appeared in films including “Kelly’s Heroes” and “Two Lane Blacktop”; he also had a small role in “The Godfather: Part II.”

On the shoot for 1976’s “The Missouri Breaks,” starring Marlon Brando and Nicholson, Stanton made a long-term friend in Brando when he courageously dissuaded the increasingly eccentric actor from making a foolish choice in his performance.

The actor played one of the doomed crewmen in Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and a crooked preacher in John Huston’s “Wise Blood,” and he had a fairly significant role in John Carpenter’s “Escape From New York” as Brain, who keeps the machines running in the ruined high-security prison Manhattan has become

In 1983, playwright Sam Shepard got to talking with Stanton at a bar in Sante Fe, N.M., and later offered him the lead role in “Paris, Texas.” “I was telling him I was sick of the roles I was playing,” Stanton told the New York Times. “I told him I wanted to play something of some beauty or sensitivity. I had no inkling he was considering me for the lead in his movie.” He also worked with Shepard in the 1985 “Fool for Love.”

In a 2011 review of Paolo Sorrentino’s “This Must Be the Place,” Variety said, “Like all great directors who make a road movie, Sorrentino captures the physical location as well as the inner transformation, and in keeping with the genre, he also knows Harry Dean Stanton has to be included.”

Stanton did voice work for the Johnny Depp animated film “Rango” in 2011. In a 2010 episode of NBC’s “Chuck,” Stanton reprised his “Repo Man” character.

Stanton was born in West Irvine, Ky. After serving in the Navy during WWII, he attended the U. of Kentucky, studying journalism and radio and performing in “Pygmalion,” then pursued an interest in acting by heading to California to study at the Pasadena Playhouse.

He made his smallscreen debut in 1954 in an episode of the NBC show “Inner Sanctum.” In another early TV role, he was directed by Alfred Hitchcock in an episode of “Suspicion” called “Four O’Clock.” (The actor was credited as Dean Stanton in most of his early roles to avoid confusion with the actor Harry Stanton, who died in 1978.)

On the bigscreen, Stanton’s earliest, mostly uncredited work was in Westerns and war pics, debuting in 1957’s “Tomahawk Trail” and appearing in 1959 Gregory Peck starrer “Pork Chop Hill.” (He also guested on many TV Westerns, including “The Rifleman,” “Have Gun — Will Travel,” “Bonanza” and “Gunsmoke”).

Stanton also led his own band, first known as Harry Dean Stanton and the Repo Men and later simply as the Harry Dean Stanton Band, and would play pickup gigs in L.A. area clubs. Bob Dylan, with whom he worked on Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 film “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” was a friend. Another friend was Hunter S. Thompson, and Stanton sang at his funeral.

The character actor was the subject of two documentaries: 2011’s “Harry Dean Stanton: Crossing Mulholland” and Sophie Huber’s 2013 “Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction,” which featured interviews with Wenders, Shepard, Kris Kristofferson and Lynch.

He never married, though he has said he has “one or two children.”

[Admin]

www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/harry-dean-stanton-dead-paris-texas-star-91-766020

Harry Dean Stanton, Quintessential American Actor, Dies at 91

Rarely a leading man, the Kentucky native was memorable in 'Paris, Texas,' 'Repo Man,' 'Alien' and 'Big Love.'
Harry Dean Stanton, the character actor with the world-weary face who carved out an exceptional career playing grizzled loners and colorful, offbeat characters in such films as Paris, Texas and Repo Man, has died. He was 91.

Stanton, who also was memorable in Cool Hand Luke (1967), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), John Carpenter’s Escape From New York (1981) and John Hughes’ Pretty in Pink (1986) — in fact, what wasn’t he memorable in? — died Friday afternoon of natural causes at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his agent, John Kelly, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Stanton was eerily creepy as evil polygamist and self-proclaimed Mormon prophet Roman Grant on HBO’s Big Love, and he partnered regularly with David Lynch, appearing in the director’s Wild at Heart (1990), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) and the series' recent return, the 1993 miniseries Hotel Room, The Straight Story (1999) and Inland Empire (2006). (He said he turned down a meeting with Lynch about playing Dennis Hopper’s part as a serial killer in Blue Velvet.)

Stanton was great pals with actor Jack Nicholson, and they roomed together in a Laurel Canyon house on Skyline Drive in the early 1960s. (Nicholson moved in after sharing a place with screenwriter Robert Towne.) They first appeared together in Monte Hellman’s Ride in the Whirlwind (1966), which Nicholson also wrote, and Stanton always said he learned about “acting natural” from that experience.

“Harry, I’ve got this part for you. His name is Blind Dick Reilly, and he’s the head of the gang. He’s got a patch over one eye and a derby hat,” Stanton, in a 2008 interview with Esquire, recalled Nicholson pitching him. “Then he says, ‘But I don’t want you to do anything. Let the wardrobe play the character.’ Which meant, just play yourself. That became my whole approach."

He and Nicholson caroused and worked together in Arthur Penn’s The Missouri Breaks (1976), Man Trouble (1992), The Pledge (2001) and Anger Management (2003). Stanton also became friends with Marlon Brando, another actor from Missouri Breaks, and they engaged in long phone calls for years before Brando’s death in 2004.

Meanwhile, Stanton was an elegant musical performer with an angelic tenor voice. He sang and played rhythm guitar and harmonica in a Tex-Mex band that did weekly gigs at The Mint in Los Angeles. (He also was a regular in front of and behind the bar at Dan Tana's in West Hollywood.)

Stanton played a convict and sang in Cool Hand Luke, coaching Paul Newman’s character on the song “Plastic Jesus.” Years later, he portrayed an Ozark musician in Chrystal (2004).

So it’s no surprise that Stanton bonded with Kris Kristofferson and recommended that his friend work with him in the title role of a former 1960s rock star on the downside in 1972’s Cisco Pike. (It was the country singer’s first leading role.) A year later, he befriended Bob Dylan during the difficult shoot for Sam Peckinpah’s somber western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973).

With his hangdog, morose visage and faced etched with crevices, Stanton was known for playing characters of innate sadness or darkness. The omnipresent cigarette dangling from his lips helped with that.

"The great Harry Dean Stanton has left us," Lynch said in a statement. "There went a great one. There's nobody like Harry Dean. Everyone loved him. And with good reason. He was a great actor (actually beyond great) — and a great human being — so great to be around him!!! You are really going to be missed Harry Dean!!! Loads of love to you wherever you are now!!!"

Stanton had been working for decades as a character actor and was well into his 50s when he got his first lead role, playing Travis, a man and father broken by unrequited love, in Wim Wenders’ classic road movie Paris, Texas (1984).

“After all these years, I finally got the part I wanted to play,” Stanton once said. “If I never did another film after Paris, Texas, I’d be happy.”

Wrote Roger Ebert in a 2002 critique of the film: “Stanton has long inhabited the darker corners of American noir, with his lean face and hungry eyes, and here he creates a sad poetry.”

Stanton also sang on the film’s Ry Cooder soundtrack, performing a haunting Mexicali waltz, “Cancion Mixteca,” in Spanish.

In Alex Cox’s satirical cult sensation Repo Man (1984), Stanton recruits a young punk rocker (Emilio Estevez) to seize cars, just like him.

“Harry is a walking contradiction,” Sophie Huber, who directed the 2012 documentary Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction, said in a 2013 interview with The Guardian. “He has this pride in appearing to not have to work hard to be good. He definitely does not want to be seen to be trying.”

Harry Dean Stanton was born on July 14, 1926, in West Irvine, Ky., a small tobacco-growing community. His father was a farmer and a barber, his mother a hairdresser. Following high school, Stanton served in the Navy as a cook on an ammunitions ship in the Pacific during World War II — he was in the Battle of Okinawa — then enrolled at the University of Kentucky to study journalism and radio arts.

Since 2011, the Kentucky city of Lexington each year has hosted a Harry Dean Stanton Festival.

In 1949, Stanton hopped a Greyhound bus to California to enroll at the Pasadena Playhouse. He performed on L.A. stages and toured as a singer with a Baptist preacher and spent time in New York studying acting with Stella Adler.

Stanton was touring with a children’s play when he quit during a stop in California, deciding to try his hand in television and films. His first credit came in 1954 when he appeared on the series Inner Sanctum, and Alfred Hitchcock gave him a bit part as a Department of Corrections employee in The Wrong Man (1956).

Starting out, Stanton often played menacing black hats or crusty sidekicks on such TV shows as The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, U.S. Marshal, Bat Masterson, The Rifleman, Johnny Ringo and The Untouchables.

He landed his first significant part as the son of an evil rancher in the Michael Curtiz Western The Proud Rebel (1958), also starring Alan Ladd and Olivia de Havilland.

In Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Stanton has just a few minutes on screen — playing a lonely, gay hitchhiker who puts a hand on Warren Oates’ knee — but he’s unforgettable.

The quintessentially American actor was hired by such famed directors as Francis Ford Coppola (1974’s The Godfather: Part II), John Huston (1979’s Wise Blood), Robert Altman (1985’s Fool for Love), Martin Scorsese (1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ), John Frankenheimer (1990’s The Fourth War) and Frank Darabont (1999’s The Green Mile).

His other notable film credits include Kelly’s Heroes (1970), Dillinger (1973), Farewell, My Lovely (1975), 92 in the Shade (1975), Straight Time (1978), Private Benjamin (1980), Red Dawn (1984), Stars and Bars (1988), Never Talk to Strangers (1995), She’s So Lovely (1997) and The Mighty (1998).

More recently, he appeared in The Avengers (2012), Seven Psychopaths (2012) and Lucky — in theaters Sept. 29 — and on the series Getting On at HBO.

He never wanted to be a leading man. “Too much work,” he said.

Except for a brief marriage, Stanton was a bachelor who in the Partly Fiction documentary spoke about the lost love of his life, actress Rebecca De Mornay. “She left me for Tom Cruise,” he says in the film. Deborah Harry, whom he also dated, recorded a 1989 song for him, “I Want That Man.”

His agent said that Stanton "is survived by family and friends who loved him."

Stanton said his religious philosophy was “closer to Taoism or Zen Buddism, because it’s the most practical.” Ruminating about death in a 2013 interview in The New Yorker, he said, “When you’re deep asleep and not dreaming, where the fuck are you? There’s total blackness, it’s nothing, right? So I’m hoping that’s what death is, that it’s all gonna go. I don’t want to deal with any consciousness afterward.”