10 Actors Who Died As Heroes (& Then Lived To Become Villains)
4. Dennis Hopper
Died A Hero - Easy Rider
Nobody in Easy Rider is a particularly good guy, but in counterculture terms, Dennis Hopper's Billy and Peter Fonda's Wyatt are as close to heroes as they come. They pretty much invented the idea of anti-heroes as we know them, in fact.
They're very much renegade personalities fighting against a square world that doesn't understand or welcome them - to the extent that a community of locals savagely beats them in their sleep, killing the third member of their group (Jack Nicholson's George). They're both sympathetic but morally flawed and they remains some of cinema's most complex, cool characters, and icons of counter-culture, partly because both are gunned down in cold blood simply for existing at the end.
But Became The Villain - Speed
In truth, Dennis Hopper has played multiple villain roles, because his intense performance style and ability to switch on the ham wed so well with bad guy material. He's wasn't always great (see Super Mario Bros), but when it landed, as in Blue Velvet, Speed and even the widely derided Waterworld, he was often the best part of the entire movie.
How ironic that a counterculture tub-thumper would end up playing memorable villains.