Actor: Dennis Hopper

Dennis Hopper directed and starred in Easy Rider, which cost almost nothing, made an enormous amount and is generally credited with opening the door for the New Hollywood generation.

He then directed The Last Movie, which was incomprehensible and effectively unreleasable, and spent the next decade largely unemployable through drug and alcohol use he has described in detail.

Blue Velvet was the comeback. Frank Booth is one of the most frightening screen villains ever created, and Hopper reportedly told David Lynch he had to play him because he was him.

Apocalypse Now, Hoosiers and Speed fill out the later work, and he was a serious photographer and art collector.