Dennis Hopper has prostate cancer

The former hellraiser Dennis Hopper has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and is currently receiving treatment at the University of Southern California. The 73-year-old, who directed and acted in 1969's Easy Rider with Peter Fonda, has cancelled all forthcoming appointments, including a trip to Melbourne, Australia, for an exhibition titled Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood.
 
His manager Sam Maydew told entertainment website E! Online: "We're hoping for the best". The news comes a month after the Hollywood veteran, who has been acting for more than 50 years, was admitted to hospital in New York suffering from flu-like symptoms. On that occasion he was released after a day, and the incident was put down to dehydration.
 
Hopper has made 200 appearances in films and TV, starting his career in a 1955 episode of the drama serial Medic. His first film role came in Rebel Without A Cause the same year, where he met and befriended the film's star James Dean. Hopper subsequently appeared in Giant, Dean's last film, and the star's death in a car crash in September 1955 affected him greatly.
 
During the late 1950s and 60s, Hopper was arguably as well known for his photography as for his acting. He was profiled by writer Terry Southern as an up-and-coming photographer to watch, and he shot fellow actors such as Paul Newman, Jane Fonda and Andy Warhol. [As an avid art collector, Hopper bought a Warhol Soup Can painting for $75 which is now worth $10m.]
 
He returned to fame in the film world with Easy Rider, a counterculture hit that broke through into the mainstream, but by the 1970s his drinking and drug abuse were at their height. Peter Biskind's book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls notes that Hopper was ingesting three grams of cocaine a day, 30 beers, marijuana, and numerous Cuba libres during the filming of Human Highway. Hopper also made an appearance in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now.
 
In 1983 Hopper entered a rehab programme and has stayed clean ever since. He made his second return to the limelight in David Lynch's 1986 disturbing thriller Blue Velvet, where he played the gas-huffing Frank Booth. He has been the go-to man for OTT villains ever since, hamming it up in such film roles in Waterworld and Speed, and as Victor Drazen in the first series of 24.
 
In recent years his transformation into a renaissance man has been complete, as he has become a fixture on the international art scene as an artist and buyer. His collection is now reported to be worth more than $100m and is housed in a Frank Gehry-designed home in Venice, California. Along the way he has been married five times - once for just a week to Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas - and has four children.
 
He gave an unflinchingly honest summary of his life to Garth Pierce last year in the Times: "I have not had a drink or hard narcotic in 25 years. I have been in over 150 movies. I have only directed seven, unfortunately. I have tried every year to direct, but could not get financing. I try to be as good as I can in some bad movies. Then, occasionally, I get a part in a good movie, but a lot of movies I have done have been pretty grim." ·