5. Dennis Hopper
Is there an actor that more accurately defines "cult" than Dennis Hopper? This guy didn't just portray some of cult cinema's greatest characters - he also lived a countercultural lifestyle that matches up to those of 1950s/1960s provocateurs like William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, The Rolling Stones and James Dean. This is the man that made his name with Easy Rider, probably the greatest cult film ever. He was in Rebel Without A Cause, Cool Hand Luke and Rumble Fish. He is a common thread, basically, in pretty much every countercultural masterpiece to have come out of America between the 1950s and the 1980s. It doesn't end there though. He brought to life David Lynch's horrifying Frank Booth in Blue Velvet. He starred in the masterful smash-hit Apocalypse Now. He's been in smaller cult successes like Hoosiers, and he even played a chainsaw-wielding sheriff in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (just to, y'know, shore up his B-movie credentials too!). He lived fast, too. He absolutely embodied everything controversial, cool and exciting about the counterculture. Drugs, sex, booze, fighting the system... Hopper did it all. His death in 2010 sent shockwaves through the film industry and culture as a whole. Few actors have bucked the trends like he did, and he will go down in history as one of the greatest cult figures - not just actors - that ever lived.