Academy Award Nominee Peter Fonda Dead At 79

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Peter Fonda (image via screen capture)

Peter Fonda, son of acting legend Henry Fonda, the younger brother of Jane Fonda and the father of Bridget Fonda, has passed away at the age of 79 at his home in Los Angeles.

The cause of death was respiratory failure due to lung cancer.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Fonda received an Academy Award nomination as a screenwriter for Easy Rider, which he shared with Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern.

Fonda and Hopper dreamed up the idea of two motorcyclists who hit it big with a drug deal and take off across the country, ostensibly to attend Mardi Gras. Their trek was "in search of America," emblematic of the '60s zeitgeist of rebellion and drug experimentation.

Featuring Jack Nicholson as their alcoholic, back rider/lawyer, the film was a low-budget, colossal hit.

For the cataclysmic year of 1969, Easy Rider was a road movie that accomplished cinematically what Jack Kerouac's On the Road did for literature. It won a standing ovation at Cannes and the festival's best director award.

To a generation of young people, Fonda was "Captain America" and a poster boy for the age. With his cool shades and leather jacket with the flag stitched on back, he sat perched atop a chrome-laden, high-handle-bar cycle, and the poster for the film was ubiquitous in college dorms in 1969 and the early '70s.

Nearly 30 years after Easy Rider, Fonda's performance in Ulee's Gold (1997) as a beekeeper and sullen Vietnam War veteran whose family had nearly fallen apart earned him a best actor Oscar nom.

In the years before Ulee's Gold, he had become a cinematic recluse, living in Livingston, where he had two ranches and 300 acres and rejoiced in the solitude. "Most people can't hang in with me," he said in a 1997 interview. "I have a tendency to go tangential."

The family statement concluded: "In honor of Peter, please raise a glass to freedom."

Actor Peter Fonda, the star and co-writer of "Easy Rider" and the son of acting legend Henry Fonda and brother of Jane Fonda, is dead at 79, his family confirmed Friday https://t.co/wCE6lBBQgn pic.twitter.com/LE3NXJ2JuQ

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) August 16, 2019
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