“Muslims want the whole world to be Muslim. Christians want the whole world to be Christian. Catholics, Protestants, Mormons. They’re all the same. Far out, right? Everyone wants the world to be like them.”
Peter Fonda
Peter Henry Fonda, son of Henry Fonda, brother of Jane Fonda, and father of Bridget Fonda,was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Easy Rider (1969), and an Oscar for Best Actor for Ulee’s Gold (1997). He won two Golden Globe Awards.
Five Great Fonda Performances:
The Wild Angels (1966), Roger Corman‘s biker outlaw film made Fonda one of the faces of New Hollywood, and forever made him as a Harley-Davidson icon. In this one he plays opposite Bruce Dern, Nancy Sinatra, and Diane Ladd. Fonda went on to co-star with Dern agian in Corman’s 1967 psychedelic film The Trip the next year.
Easy Rider (1969); Dennis Hopper‘s wild road movie has Fonda and Hopper playing drug-smuggling motorcyclists making their way across the USA to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Along the way they get involved with some sketchy hitchhikers and have a bad LSD trip in a very trippy scene. Easy Rider changed Hollywood and is a cultural touchstone. It is made even more iconic by Fonda’s brilliant work.
Ulee’s Gold (1997) is Fonda’s only Best Actor Oscar nomination. He plays a reclusive, widowed beekeeper in Victor Nuñez’s bittersweet drama
The Limey (1999) is Steven Soderbergh‘s noir featuring Terence Stamp as a dangerous Englishman who comes to Los Angeles to avenge his daughter’s murder. Fonda is one of the prime suspects, a record producer with a past as drug dealer. A truly great film with two legendary actors at the top of their game.
3:10 To Yuma (2007), James Mangold‘s thoughtful, tense remake of the classic 1957 Western. It has Fonda in a memorable supporting role playing a Pinkerton agent who is tracking down an outlaw played by Russell Crowe.
The final film with Fonda to be released during his lifetime is Boundaries (2018), appropriately, a road trip flick with Vera Farmiga, Christopher Plummer, and Bobby Cannavale. It’s a very fine film that suffered at the box-office after Fonda tweeted that the son of the tangerine Mein Furor should be put in a cage like the children of asylum seekers.
The Last Full Measure, a Vietnam war drama, is scheduled to be released in October 2019. The film stars hottie Sebastian Stan, Plummer, William Hurt, Ed Harris, Samuel L. Jackson, and Fonda in his final film appearance.
Read World of Wonder writer Trey Speegle‘s tribute here.
Quote source: Peter Fonda: What I’ve Learned by Mike Sager, Esquire, 2008.
