Chronicle Movie Critic Dennis Hopper, who directed and starred in the seminal counter-cultural film 'Easy Rider' and later established himself as a highly distinct and flamboyant character actor, died Saturday at his home in Venice after battling prostate cancer. He was 74 and died surrounded by family and friends, according to a family friend. Over a prolific career with many ups and downs, marred at times by drug use, Hopper, at his best, seemed a man in the grip of an ecstatic vision that ultimately had nothing to do with chemicals or substances. In his acting, he often reached beyond the pedestrian to find the truth right at the edge of madness. He called life 'this miracle we all exist in' and his finest performances suggested an affectionate respect for the various and telling ways people receive reality. It was a sensibility made for the director's chair, and it was as the director of 'Easy Rider' that Hopper became a major cultural force. The episodic story of two hippies (Hopper and Peter Fonda) making their way across America on motorcycles, Hopper placed his hero's quest for identity and fulfillment within the tradition of the road stories of American literature, from Mark Twain through Kerouac. In 'Easy Rider,' the choice to become a hippie wasn't a passive one, but something active and difficult, part of a rigorous pursuit of truth. Hopper was born in Dodge City, Kan., a town made famous in movie westerns, but his first lucky break as an actor came at the age of 13, when his family got out of Dodge and moved to San Diego. There Hopper began his acting training at San Diego's Old Globe Theater. His studies later took him to Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio in New York City, the era's most important training ground for young actors, and in 1955, at the age of 19, he began a career in television. That same year, he got a role in his first feature film, 'Rebel Without a Cause' (1955), which put him in contact with James Dean. He later appeared with Dean in the movie 'Giant' (1956). Hopper idolized Dean and was greatly affected by his death. 'Dean was the real father of the Beat Generation,' Hopper told me in 1996, 'not Kerouac, not Burroughs or Ginsberg. To me it was Dean.' In the 1950s and early '60s, Hopper pursued careers as a television actor and photographer (some of his photographs were subsequently exhibited in major museums). He made more than 100 small screen appearances, as a guest star, then transitioned into feature film, with appearances in 'Cool Hand Luke' (1967) and 'True Grit' (1969). Then came 'Easy Rider,' which put Hopper on the map. Hopper's life and career deserve to be remembered as triumphant: He did important, lasting work. He impressed his fun-loving, somewhat skewed but good-natured personality upon the times. And he achieved note as a collector and enthusiast for modern art. (He bought Andy Warhol's painting of a Campbell's soup can before it was famous.) Yet his career was full of many defeats, many of them self-inflicted, some the result of bad luck. In the 1970s, following the disastrous reception of his second film, 'The Last Movie' (1971), he found it impossible to get financing as a director, and good roles were hard to come by. Drugs and alcohol were a factor in his divorce from Michelle Phillips, to whom he was married for only one week in 1970. He took parts in European productions and stayed under the radar for most of the 1970s, before resurfacing as a frenetic photojournalist in Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now.' The role was received by the public as a riff on Hopper's notorious public persona. But Hopper's second phase could not truly begin until he got sober, which he did in 1983. Three years later, he made a memorable appearance as the off-his-rocker villain, Frank Booth, in David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet' (1986). By now Hopper's legend and personal history informed the public's response to him on screen and enriched their understanding of the characters he played. His role in 'Hoosiers' as a well-meaning man struggling with alcoholism couldn't have come at a better time, and his performance was met with a best supporting actor Oscar nomination. With those two triumphs, Hopper was re-launched in this era as a character actor, often as a villain -- most memorably in 'Red Rock West' (1993), as a screaming, maniacal hit man with an inferiority complex; and in 'Speed' (1994), as a mad bomber -- and less memorably in 'Super Mario Bros' (1993) and 'Waterworld' (1995). Often his particular dazzle was the only spark of life in forgotten thrillers, such as 'Boiling Point' (1993). 'A lot of the time, I'm trying to make gold out of s---,' Hopper said in 1996. 'They're not great parts. I usually get them after everybody else has turned them down. And I just hope to have enough craft to make things work.' He made a vivid brief appearance in 'True Romance' (1993), in which he artfully avoids torture by enraging a mafia henchman into killing him. (He does this with pointed observations about the proximity of Sicily and Africa). But the best role of his career came in 'Carried Away' (1996), a film few people know, in which he played an aging country schoolteacher who falls in love with a 17-year-old girl (Amy Locane). Hopper could easily have been nominated for an Academy Award for his performance, but Fine Line dumped the movie, despite great reviews by Siskel & Ebert and by critics in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. 'That's the best performance I've done,' Hopper said. 'That's the first time I ever had something really good to play.' He went on to say that it was 'very destructive' to his career, to have starred in a movie that was never even distributed. His assessment may have been accurate. After 1996, Hopper's ceased to be a frequent supporting player in mainstream films. Over the years, Hopper continued to pursue his career as a director, but financing remained elusive. He had a hit with 'Colors' (1988), starring Sean Penn, and two years later directed 'The Hot Spot' (1990), a sexy thriller with Jennifer Connelly, Don Johnson and Virginia Madsen, but that film, unaccountably, went nowhere. His last film as a director was 'Chasers' (1994), starring Tom Berenger. In that 1996 interview, he told me of a script that he couldn't wait to direct, but before I could begin to look forward to seeing it on screen, he predicted (correctly, alas) that the project would go nowhere. 'You know, if you say, 'I found this script, I don't really like it, it needs a rewrite,' you might get a deal,' Hopper said. 'But if you come in and say you love it, they say, 'Uh-oh. He loves it.'' In recent years, Hopper starred in the TV show, 'Crash,' a spin-off of the Oscar-winning film. He also became notable as one of Hollywood's few Republicans, and along those lines, he appeared as the Judge in 'An American Carol' (2008) and as a kind of Walter Mondale parody in the political satire, 'Swing Vote' (2008). However, in an Election Day 2008 appearance on 'The View,' Hopper announced that he'd voted for Barack Obama. 'I've been a Republican since Reagan, and I stayed a long time,' he said, 'but (Sarah) Palin finally sent me over the other side.' In person, Hopper was engaging and soft-spoken, disarmingly honest and self-deprecating, prone to observations about art and philosophical reflection, an amusing conversationalist with a smile that enlisted his listeners in a sense of fun and complicity. His Los Angeles home looked like a museum. He lived surrounded by art, with works by Basquiat, Warhol, Schnabel and Duchamp. Hopper was married five times and is survived by four children, including a six-year-old daughter, Galen, born to his fifth wife, Victoria Duffy. He filed for divorce in January from Duffy after 14 years of marriage. Dennis Hopper will be remembered for his affinity for rebellion, for his celebration and embodiment of the independent spirit. Funeral arrangements are pending. E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasallesfchronicle.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report. 