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| Birth Name(s) : Peter Henry Fonda |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
Susan Brewer (1961-1972) |
| Profession:
N/A |
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Full Peter Fonda Biography
Fonda was born in New York, New York, the son of actor Henry Fonda and financier Frances Ford Seymour, who took her own life in 1950. Fonda is the younger brother of actress Jane Fonda. On his eleventh birthday, he accidentally shot himself and nearly died. Fonda studied acting in Omaha, Nebraska, which was his father's home town. He began attending the University of Omaha and joined the Omaha Community Playhouse, where many actors (including his father and Marlon Brando) founded their careers. Fonda is the father of actress Bridget Fonda.
Fonda found work on Broadway where he achieved notice in Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole, before going to Hollywood to make films. He started his film career in romantic leading roles. He debuted in Tammy and the Doctor (1963), which he called "Tammy and the Schmuckface". But Fonda's intensity impressed Robert Rossen, the director of Lilith (1964). Rossen envisioned a Jewish actor in the role of Stephen Evshevsky, a mental patient. Fonda earned the role after removing his boss' glasses from his face and putting them on so as to look more "Jewish". He also played the male lead in The Young Lovers (1964), about out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and The Victors (1964), an "anti-war war movie".
Through his friendships with members of the Byrds, Fonda visited The Beatles in their rented house in Benedict Canyon in Los Angeles in August, 1965. While John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison were under the influence of LSD, Lennon heard Fonda say, "I know what it's like to be dead". This phrase became the tag line for their song "She Said She Said", which appeared in their groundbreaking Revolver (1966) album. In 1966, Fonda was arrested in the anti-war Sunset Strip riot which the police ended forcefully. The band Buffalo Springfield protested the department's handling of the incident in their song "For What it's Worth".Replica of the "Captain America"-Harley which Fonda rode in Easy Rider, on display in a German Museum.
Fonda's first counterculture-oriented film role was the lead character Heavenly Blues, a Hells Angels chapter president, in the Roger Corman directed film The Wild Angels (1966). The Wild Angels is still remembered for Fonda's "eulogy" delivered at the fiasco of a fallen Angel's funeral service, which was sampled in the Primal Scream recording "Loaded" (1991), and in other rock songs. Then Fonda played the male lead character in Corman's film The Trip (1967), a TV commerical director experiencing the ambivalence and turmoil of divorce.
In 1968, Fonda produced Easy Rider, the classic film for which he is best known. Easy Rider is about two long-haired bikers traveling through the southwest and southern United States in a world of intolerance and violence. The Fonda character was the charismatic, laconic "Captain America" whose motorcycle jacket bore a large American flag across the back. Dennis Hopper played the garrulous "Billy". Jack Nicholson was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his turn as George Hanson, an alcoholic civil rights lawyer who rides along. Fonda co-wrote Easy Rider with Terry Southern and Hopper, who directed.Peter Fonda in The Hired Hand
Fonda received critical recognition for his part in Ulee's Gold (1997). Fonda portrayed a stoic north Florida beekeeper who, in spite of his tumultuous family life, imparts a sense of integrity to his wayward convict son, and takes risks in acting protectively toward his drug-abusing daughter-in-law. His performance resulted in an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Fonda's movie career has made the more interesting for the extreme contrast between the wide-eyed and questing (though possibly amoral, certainly drug-dealing) rebel motorcyclist in Easy Rider and the upright war-veteran father he played nearly three decades later in Ulee's Gold — a character who tries to share his wisdom about integrity with his wayward son and saves his addicted daughter-in-law's life.
He also lent his voice talent to the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as the hippie, The Truth. In 2002 Fonda was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame.
Fonda will make a special guest appearence on ER 's 300th episode as a man who gave up his Down Syndrome child for adoption and finally has a chance to meet him years later. This epiosde will air on December 6, 2007. |
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