SHAFRAZI: And Dean had just shot a clip about safe driving, which is remarkable.

BRANT: What was your reaction when you found out that he’d died?

HOPPER: Okay, so I’m in the theater in Santa Monica. My agent is there. The play hasn’t started yet when my agent gets up and leaves to take a call. I’m sitting there, and he comes back and he’s ashen. He says, “I have to tell you something, but promise me that you’ll stay here in the theater.” I said, “Is it someone in my family?” He said, “No, but are you going to stay here?” “Yeah,” I say. He says, “James Dean was just killed in a car accident.” And at that moment, the lights went out on the stage, and the spotlight came up on this empty chair, and I flipped out. That was it. In fact, I think I hit my agent. I went crazy. It was a bad time. You know, I really believe in destiny, and that didn’t fit in.

BRANT: So when Dean passes, you’re a young actor, and you’re going through what has to have been, emotionally, a big change in our life: hitting stardom, landing major roles, everybody watching you. What were you going through at that time?

HOPPER: Well, people in Hollywood either loved Jimmy Dean or they hated him—but the people who loved him went into this whole thing where they were having séances, where they were seeing him, where they were talking to him. But I just couldn’t grasp the fact that he was dead. He was going to direct movies. He was the most incredible actor I’d ever seen. And the idea of destiny . . . I was really confused. Warner Bros. had loaned me out to 20th Century Fox to do this film, From Hell to Texas [1958], with [director] Henry Hathaway. But I just didn’t want to do the movie. I didn’t like the part, and I thought, after Giant, I should be doing something else. Hathaway was one of those tough old-school directors. He became a prop man, and worked his way all the way up to becoming a director. He was a real workhorse—and a big filmmaker. He wanted me. He thought that I was the best young actor he’d seen. But he wanted me to imitate Marlon Brando. He gave me gestures, line readings—all these preconceived things. And I refused to do them. I walked off that picture three times on location—and three times, he came to get me. We’d have dinner. He was the most charming man you’d ever meet at dinner. But in the daytime, he was a monster. So at dinner we’d talk about what we were going to do the next day, and he would say, “Great, terrific.” And then we’d get on the set, and he would be like, [raises voice] “That’s fuckin’ dinner talk, kid!” So we finally get back to the 20th Century Fox lot, and it’s my last day on the picture. I come into the studio and Hathaway is there. He points to a stack of film cans and says, “You see what that is over there?” I say, “It looks like some film cans to me, Henry.” He says, “Yeah. We’ve got enough to shoot for three or four months. You see what we got over there?” He points to a bunch of sleeping bags. “We’ve got sleeping bags. We’re going to sleep here on the soundstage until you do the scene my way.” So we start working at around 7 A.M., and we send for lunch at around 11 A.M. when Steve Trilling, who was second in charge to Jack Warner at Warner Bros., calls. He says, “What the hell is going on over there? Do you know that Hathaway owns 40 percent of 20th Century Fox? What are you trying to do, lose our studio? He’s going to sue us! Just do what he says and get your ass back home.” And then lunch arrives, and Jack Warner calls. “Are you out of your fuckin’ mind?” he says. “Hathaway is going to own Warner Bros.! Whatever he wants, do it a hundred times for him.” So, finally, it’s 11 o’clock at night, and I’ve tried every way possible to do the scene, and I finally just break down and start crying. I say, “Okay, just tell me what you want.” And he gives me all of this stuff to do, and I do it, he prints it, we’re done, and I leave the studio. I didn’t really work again in film after that until Hathaway rehired me for The Sons of Katie Elder [1965].