PETER FONDA

(23 February 1940 - 16 August 2019)

The American actor, writer and director Peter Fonda, who has died aged 79 from lung cancer, was the son of actor Henry Fonda and the brother of Jane Fonda. His first work as an actor was with the Omaha Playhouse, after which he moved to New York to be an apprentice at the Cecilwood Theatre. He made his professional stage debut on Broadway and then moved to Hollywood. After some TV work, his first film in 1963 was Tammy and the Doctor with Sandra Dee and then he was in Carl Foreman’s epic war film The Victors with Vince Edwards, Albert Finney, George Hamilton and George Peppard. He then worked with Roger Corman on Wild Angels, about biker gangs, and also Corman’s drug-filled The Trip. Other early films with Fonda include Robert Rossen’s Lilith and Easy Rider which he co-wrote with director and actor Dennis Hopper, and which was an enormous hit worldwide, grossing some 60 million dollars from a $400,000 outlay, and which earned Fonda, Hopper and Terry Southern Academy Award nominations. He was also in Hopper’s The Last Movie which, with guest appearances by many celebrated stars, was a disaster. Fonda directed three films himself, the first of which, The Hired Hand, in which he also starred, was very good. He was in Robert Wise’s Two People with Lindsay Wagner, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry with Susan George, Peter Collinson’s Open Season, Race With the Devil, Val Guest’s The Diamond Mercenaries with Telly Savalas, Jonathan Demme’s Fighting Mad, his own film Wanda Nevada with Brooke Shields, The Cannonball Run with Burt Reynolds, plus many other films that were mostly potboilers. He made The Rose Garden for the Dutch director Fons Rademakers, and Deadfall (1993) for Christopher Coppola. He played both Dracula and Dr Van Helsing in Michael Almereyda’s Nadja, worked with John Carpenter on Escape from L.A., and was nominated for an Oscar as best actor for Ulee’s Gold. He was in Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey with Terence Stamp in 1999 and then continued to act in films and on TV during the 2000 decade including the remake of 3:10 to Yuma. His final three films, The Magic Hours, The Last Full Measure and Skate God are yet to be released. Peter Fonda was married three times and is father to two children, the actress Bridget Fonda and the cinematographer Justin Fonda.

MICHAEL DARVELL