Rest ‘Easy,’ Peter
H'wood scion Fonda, 79, passes
Legendary Hollywood actor Peter Fonda, who skyrocketed to fame by co-writing and starring in the 1969 counterculture classic “Easy Rider,” died on Friday at his Los Angeles home. He was 79.
He died of respiratory failure after a battle with lung cancer, his publicist said.
Fonda was born to Hollywood royalty in 1940. His father, Henry Fonda, had a decades-long career as a blockbuster actor, starring in American cinema classics including “12 Angry Men” and “How the West Was Won.”
Peter and sister Jane Fonda, a two-time Oscar winner and seventime nominee, deftly followed their father onto the stage and screen.
In his nearly six-decade career, the charismatic and versatile actor’s roles spanned from a wandering cowboy in 1971’s “The Hired Hand” to a widowed beekeeper in “Ulee’s Gold” (1997).
But it was Fonda’s depiction of Wyatt — the pot-smoking, Harley Davidson-riding outlaw opposite Dennis Hopper in “Easy Rider” — that clinched his legacy as a bohemian legend.
In interviews with The Post over the years, Fonda recalled his own free-wheeling lifestyle at the center of pop-culture history.
In 2000, Fonda told The Post that he was there in 1965 when George Harrison tripped on acid with his fellow Beatles. Harrison feared he was going to die.
“I was saying, ‘Don’t worry, George, it’s OK. I know what it’s like to be dead,’ ” Fonda said, a reference to surviving a near-fatal childhood shooting accident.
His effort to calm down the highas-a-kite guitarist inadvertently sparked John Lennon to come up with lyrics to the song “She Said, She Said,” Fonda recalled.
“Lennon looks over, all pissed off, and says, ‘ You know what it’s like to be dead? Who put all that s--t in your head?
“‘You’re making me feel like I’ve never been born.’ ”
That phrase stuck with Lennon, who sang it on the track from The Beatles’ 1966 “Revolver” album.
Fonda’s daughter, Bridget, followed her father’s footsteps into a Hollywood career of her own.
She starred in hits such as “Single White Female” and “Jackie Brown” before retiring in 2002.
Other survivors include Fonda’s third wife, Margaret DeVogelaere, and son Justin, who works as a cameraman.