‘Easy Rider’ co-star Fonda dies at 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 non-conformist tendencies and earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing the psychedelic road trip movie “Easy Rider.” He would never win that golden statuette, butwould later benominated for his leading performance as a Vietnam veteran and widowed beekeeper in “Ulee’s Gold.”
Fonda was born in New York in 1940 to parents whose personas were the opposite of the rebellious images their kids would cultivate. FatherHenry Fondawas already a Hollywood giant, known for playing straight-shooting cowboys and soldiers. Mother Frances Ford Seymour was a Canadianborn U.S. socialite.
He was only 10 years old when his mother died. She had a nervous breakdown after learning of her husband’s affair and was confined to a hospital. In 1950 she killed herself, slashing her throat with a razor. It would be about five years before Peter Fonda learned the truth behind her death.
Fonda accidentally shot himself and nearly died on his 11th birthday. It was a story he told often, including during an acid trip with members of the Beatles and the Byrds during which Fonda reportedly said, “I know what it’s like to be dead.”
John Lennon would use the line in the Beatles song “She Said She Said.”
Fondawent to the University of Nebraska in his father’s home state, joining the same acting group — the Omaha Community Playhouse — where Henry Fonda got his start.
He then returned to New York and joined the Cecilwood Theatre, getting small roles on Broadway and guest parts on television shows including “Naked City” and “Wagon Train.”
Fonda had an estranged relationship with his father throughout most of his life, but said that they grew closer over the years before Henry Fonda died in 1982.
“Peter is all deep sweetness, kind and sensitive to his core. He would never intentionally harm anything or anyone. In fact, he once argued with me that vegetables had souls,” his sister Jane Fonda said in her 2005 memoir. “Dad couldn’t appreciate and nurture Peter’s sensitivity, couldn’t see him as he was. Instead he tried to shame Peter into his own image of stoic independence.”
Although Peter never achieved the status of his father or even his older sister, 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, drugslinging bikers on a trip through the Southwest as they made their way to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
On the way, Fonda and Hopper befriend a drunken young lawyer — Jack Nicholson in a breakout role — but raise the dander of Southern rednecks and are murdered before they can return home.
Fonda’s characterWyattwore a stars-and-stripes helmet and rode a motorcycle called “Captain America,” re-purposing traditional images for the counter-culture.
Actress Illeana Douglas tweeted her condolences Friday with the hashtag “RIPCaptainAmerica.”
“‘Easy Rider’ depicted the rise of hippie culture, condemned the establishment, and celebrated freedom,” Douglas wrote. “Peter Fonda embodied those values and instilled them in a generation.”
He also starred in the 1976 film “Futureworld — filmed in the Houston area — that was a sequel to “Westworld.”
Fonda’s output may have been prolific, but was not always wellregarded which he was acutely aware of. But he said that “Ulee’s Gold,” which came out in 1997, was the “most fun” he’d ever had making a movie. He wore the same wire-rimmed glasses his fatherwore in “On Golden Pond” in the role. He lost out on the Oscar to Nicholson, who won for “As Good as It Gets.”