Writer and star of the counterculture classic
Peter Fonda, who has died aged 79, did not have as much success as either his father, Henry Fonda, nor his sister, Jane. He won a place in popular culture, nonetheless, thanks to one film – the counterculture classic Easy Rider (1969). He had the idea for the film, about two hippie bikers discovering the “real America” on a road trip to Louisiana, and recruited Dennis Hopper to direct it. “I figure you direct it, I produce it, we’ll both write it and both star in it, save some money,” Fonda said. With a powerful rock soundtrack, and a careermaking turn from the then unknown Jack Nicholson, the film was made for less than $400,000 and was released the month before Woodstock – when the free-spirited optimism of the Summer of Love was giving way to a darker mood.
A worldwide box-office hit, it helped usher in a new generation of auteur directors, said The Independent, including the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese – but Fonda did not manage to capitalise on its success. While his sister’s career flourished in the 1970s, his waned. As an actor, he would not enjoy such acclaim again until 1997, when he was nominated for an Oscar for his role as an emotionally damaged Vietnam vetturned-beekeeper in Ulee’s Gold. He admitted that he had not had trouble finding inspiration for the part. “I knew Ulee well,” he said in 1997. “He’s a recalcitrant man with a visage that shows no hint of kindness. I had breakfast across the table from that guy my whole life… it was my father.”
Peter Henry Fonda was born in New York in 1940, the same year his father starred in The Grapes of Wrath. His mother Frances, the second of Fonda’s four wives, was an emotionally fragile socialite. In 1950, when Peter was ten and his sister Jane was 12, his mother was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where she committed suicide after learning that her husband was having an affair. (Years later, her psychiatrist would describe Henry Fonda as “cold, self-absorbed” and a “complete narcissist”.) Within months, the actor had married Susan Blanchard – his 21-year-old girlfriend – and sent his children to live with relatives. On his 11th birthday, Peter accidentally shot himself in the stomach and almost died. Telling John Lennon about it in the 1960s, he said, “I know what it’s like to be dead” – a line Lennon would use in the Beatles song She
Said She Said. Fonda decided early on that he wanted to become an actor, and after graduating from the University of Nebraska, he began performing in local theatre. He made his Broadway debut in 1961, and his Hollywood one in 1963, playing Sandra Dee’s love interest in Tammy and the Doctor. Rangy and good-looking, with his father’s piercing blue eyes, he turned in a likeable performance in the film, said The New York Times. After that, though, he took more dramatic roles. In 1966, he played a biker in Roger Corman’s Wild Angels; the next year, he starred alongside Dennis Hopper in Corman’s psychedelic drama The Trip, written by Jack Nicholson. His on-screen persona could hardly have been further from that of his famous father, who’d specialised in straighttalking cowboys and honest toilers.
In Easy Rider, Fonda played the freewheeling, cocaine-smuggling hippie Wyatt, who wore a Stars and Stripes helmet and rode a chopper called Captain America, which had drugs money stashed in its red, white and blue-painted fuel tank. Fonda took drugs on-set and off – which may explain his career drift. But he kept working. Among his notable later films were The Limey (1999), and 3:10 to Yuma (2007). He was married three times, and had two children, Justin and Bridget, both of whom became actors.