Easy Rider Fonda dies in LA at age 79
LOS ANGELES — Actor Peter Fonda, the son of a Hollywood legend who became a movie star in his own right after both writing and starring in the counter-culture classic Easy Rider, has died. His family said in a statement that Fonda died Friday morning at his home in Los Angeles. He was 79.
The official cause of death was respiratory failure due to lung cancer.
“In one of the saddest moments of our lives, we are not able to find the appropriate words to express the pain in our hearts,” the family said in a statement. “As we grieve, we ask that you respect our privacy.”
Born into Hollywood royalty as Henry Fonda’s only son, Peter Fonda carved his own path with his nonconformist tendencies and earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing the psychedelic road trip movie Easy Rider. He never won that golden statuette, but later was nominated for his leading performance as a Vietnam veteran and widowed beekeeper in Ulee’s Gold.
Fonda was born in New York in 1940 and was 10 years old when his mother Frances Ford Seymour died. Fonda had an estranged relationship with his father, but said that they grew closer over the years before Henry Fonda died in 1982.
Although Peter never achieved the status of his father or even his older sister Jane Fonda, the impact of Easy Rider, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary, was enough to cement his place in popular culture.
Fonda collaborated with another struggling young actor, Dennis Hopper, on the script about two weed-smoking, drug-slinging bikers on a trip through the Southwest and Deep South.
The film was a hit at Cannes, netted a best-screenplay Oscar nomination for Fonda, Hopper and Terry Southern, and has since been listed on the American Film Institute’s ranking of the top 100 American films. The establishment gave its official blessing in 1998 when Easy Rider was included in the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”