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TV Hopper Evolves From Rebel to Republican
By Kate O'Hare Wednesday, October 26, 2005 12:02 PM PT E-Ring
home

news Back in the 1960s, when Related Celebrities

Dennis Hopper was
ratings
directing his counterculture Dennis Hopper
shows classic "Easy Rider," he
could never have imagined More Headlines
OCV
himself playing a colonel
tv gal Jennifer Esposito, Bradley
and former Green Beret,
Cooper Dissolve Marriage
best bets which he does on NBC's
special sections Wednesday military drama Sheila E. Is with FOX's
"E-Ring," produced by Jerry 'Band'
Bruckheimer.
Meet the 'Beauty and the
Geek' Season Four
"People always say to me, 'Are you playing a bad guy?'" Hopper jokes, Contestants
sitting in the living room of his industrial-modern house in Venice,
'John From Cincinnati'
Calif., an imposing corrugated-metal-sheathed structure filled with Star Busted for DUI
pieces from his large modern-art collection. "Somebody said the other
night, '"From Easy Rider to E-Ring",' that should be the name of my Eliza Dushku Stays at FOX
autobiography.' It is a long way around."
FOX Thinks Donal Logue
Can 'Hackett'
But Hopper is still part of the counterculture -- only in liberal,
Democratic Los Angeles, that means being a registered Republican. TV Gal

TV Gal Revs Up for 'Race'

"I've always been political," Hopper says, "but I haven't always been a February 27, 2006
Republican. I was with Martin Luther King [and] at the Free Speech
Movement in Berkeley. I was a hippie. I was probably as Left as you TV Gal Revisits Old
Favorites
could get without being a Communist." February 20, 2006

TV Gal Puckers Up
Asked what happened, Hopper says, "I read too much Thomas
February 13, 2006
Jefferson and decided that every 25 years you needed to have a
change if you're really going to have a republic, and the Democrats TV Gal Lists a Few of Her
had been in power too long." Favorite Things
February 06, 2006

This was about the time that Ronald Reagan was campaigning for the
1980 presidential election.

"I never cared for Reagan, very honestly," Hopper says. "I thought he
was a bad actor. I never thought he was a great communicator, didn't
think he was a great speaker.

"But the idea of changing the Congress, changing the Senate, getting
the Democrats out, getting the Republicans in, also the idea of having
less government -- which didn't seem to work out."

What began as a philosophy of political change turned into a change of

political philosophy.
"The idea of less government," Hopper says, "more individual freedom,
is something that I liked. I started believing it. So I started voting. I
voted that time for Reagan, and I've voted on the straight Republican
ticket ever since. I don't go to meetings, I don't go to things. I just go
to the polls and do it."

He adds, "I think I just made the natural curve. You've got to start one
place and go all the way around."

Hopper has discovered that, while many in Los Angeles pride

themselves on their tolerance, some things still ruffle their feathers.

"The controversy about me," Hopper says, "I don't think it's going to
stop me. However, a lot of people treat me differently, and they do
bring it up. I'll be at a dinner party, and somebody will say, 'Well, you
couldn't be thinking that ...' And then you realize that everybody at the
table is looking at you, and they're like, 'You're kidding! You're not
really for Bush.' And it goes around the table.

"It can only stop me from eating, not working. I think my job with
Bruckheimer and the Pentagon is secure at the moment, knock on
wood."

The father of a flaxen-haired toddler daughter, Hopper has set aside

his wild past for family life, golf and other pursuits.

"My today is totally different than my life was in the '60s," he says. "I
would say, maybe my life isn't that different than it was in the '60s,
but the '70s, I could have done without. The '70s were dark for me.

"The drugs that were free suddenly weren't free anymore. Everybody
was addicted. The party was over. I used to do cocaine just to sober up
so I could drink again. I wonder how I got out so lucky. It's amazing."

Now 69, the blue-eyed Hopper looks lean and fit, with his largely gray
hair cut military-short. He sees the role of McNulty -- a real-estate
magnate lured out of retirement to run special ops out of the Pentagon
-- as a tribute of sorts to his father.

"I never was in the military," he says. "I was an age group that was
between the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and then the draft
came. I was under contract to Warner Bros., and there was no war
going on, so I did everything to get out, so I got out.

"But my father was in the OSS. He was in China, Burma, India.

Anyway, I just felt, when I read the thing, this seems like a reasonable
way to pay my dues."

Turns out McNulty has paid his dues as well, as revealed in an

upcoming episode called "The Forgotten," currently set to air
Wednesday, Nov. 23. According to Hopper, it's a story about a Navy
SEAL believed dead and left behind for years in the Philippines.

The situation causes McNulty to reveal his past as a Vietnam POW who
lost his wife, who believed he was dead, to another man. "I'm taking
this personally," Hopper says.
Incidentally, Hopper reveals that he and a group of men had breakfast
recently with Arizona Sen. John McCain, a former Vietnam POW whose
name is often mentioned as a Republican candidate for president in
2008.

"We felt he could get some liberal help, some Democrats," Hopper
says. "He said, 'I'm doing a lot of important things in the Senate right
now. I'm not going to think about it until after the elections [in 2006].'
He said also, 'I don't really think you can get that Democratic support
to help me when they know that I'm pro-life.'

"He's so straightforward, so honest. That's the kind of guy I'd like to be

president."

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