Peter Fonda

From Philosopedia

Peter Fonda (23 February 1940 - )

Son of actor Henry Fonda, Peter Fonda started his big screen career playing romantic leads in teen-appeal vehicles such as Tammy and the Doctor (1963) and The Young Lovers (1964). As described in Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia (Signet Books),

• As the swinging Sixties progressed, Fonda abandoned the mainstream and created a sensation starring in the 1966 Roger Corman biker flick The Wild Angels (his costar was fellow celebrity progeny Nancy Sinatra). He also began experimenting with drugs - which inspired not only his 1967 film The Trip but also Beatle John Lennon, who shared an LSD experience with Fonda and immortalized some of his acid-addled pronouncements in the song "She Said She Said." In 1969 Fonda produced and costarred in the definitive 1960s anti-establishment statement, Easy Rider, for which he shared an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. His Hollywood career since that time has been spotty; he's acted mainly in sub-A action pictures. In 1971, Fonda directed and starred in the critically acclaimed Western The Hired Hand and followed with the sci-fi oddity Idaho Transfer (1973), in which he did not appear, and Wanda Nevada (1979), playing a gambler who wins young Brooke Shields in a poker game; father Henry made a brief appearance in the picture, marking the only time father and son worked together. Popular in Japan, he made a sci-fi film called Daijoobu, Mai Furendo (All Right, My Friend) there in 1983. In recent years his own child, Bridget Fonda, has become a star and was recently directed by Peter's old crony Roger Corman in 1990's Frankenstein Unbound Peter made an amusing (and fleeting) cameo appearance in his daughter's 1993 movie Bodies, Rest & Motion - as a biker. He then took a supporting role in Deadfall (also 1993).

Peter's sister, Jane Fonda, has called him an agnostic and their father an atheist. Of his late father, Peter has said,

• I dig my father. I wish he could open his eyes and dig me.