Dennis Hopper was a giant. Throughout his life he kept company with the legends of the art world from Warhol and Schnabel to Ed Ruscha, and his own work is scheduled to be the subject of curator Jeffrey Deitch’s debut show at MOCA. As a film director Hopper was the crest on the American New Wave, and his Easy Rider can be said to have both revolutionized the studio system and launched the career of  Jack Nicholson. But as an actor he was an absolute original. In a career that spanned some 55 years he worked with all of the greats (including James Dean in two of Dean’s 3 feature films) and created iconic characters in classic films as varied as Blue Velvet, True Romance and Apocalypse Now.

Dennis Hopper, one of the last of the bad boys, one of Hollywood’s greatest talents, is dead at 74.

See the clip, “when he’s gone,” after the jump.