Peter Fonda, the iconic actor who rode a motorcycle into Hollywood history and shattered the image of the American hero, died on August 16, 2019, at the age of 79, leaving behind a legacy of rebellion, heartbreak, and a devastating family secret that haunted him for decades. The star of “Easy Rider” passed away at his home in Los Angeles from lung cancer, with his sister Jane Fonda by his side, but the story of his life is far more complex than the counterculture hero he portrayed on screen. This is the tale of a man who was born into Hollywood royalty, only to be crushed by a lie that changed everything.
Peter Fonda was born on February 23, 1940, in New York City, the son of legendary actor Henry Fonda and socialite Frances Ford Seymour. His mother had a troubled youth that led to severe mental health issues, forcing her into a sanitarium for treatment. In 1950, when Peter was just 10 years old, his father told him and his sister Jane that their mother had died of a heart attack.
Life quickly returned to normal, and Peter noticed that no one talked about his mother, and worse, no one seemed to miss her. There was no funeral, no mourning, just a void that left a young boy confused and grieving in silence.
The truth about his mother’s death would not come to light for another decade, and when it did, it shattered Peter Fonda’s world.
In 1960, while working in summer stock theater, the 20-year-old actor walked into a diner in Fishkill, New York. The owner of the diner, for reasons unknown, pulled out his wallet and showed Peter a newspaper clipping that revealed the heartbreaking secret his father had kept for years. Frances Ford Seymour had not died of a heart attack.
She had taken her own life at the sanitarium, and Henry Fonda had lied to protect his children from the stigma of suicide.
The revelation transformed Peter’s grief into a profound sense of betrayal. He felt that his father had robbed him of the chance to truly mourn his mother and understand her struggles.
This betrayal would fuel his rebellious nature and drive him to reject the polished, respectable image of old Hollywood that his father represented. Peter Fonda would become the anti-hero, the dropout, the man who looked good in sunglasses and defied every convention of the American dream.
After high school, Peter threw himself into acting, finding an escape from his family troubles on stage and screen.
He began on Broadway and television, landing his first film role in the light-hearted comedy “Tammy and the Doctor” opposite Sandra Dee. For his role in the gritty World War War II film “The Victors,” he won the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer. The world was his oyster, but he was not content to follow the path of his famous father.
Samuel Goldwyn Jr. , the son of Hollywood mogul Samuel Goldwyn, cast Peter in “The Young Lovers,” a film that did little for critics or audiences but changed Fonda’s career forever. People saw the film as a contrast to old Hollywood, something new and dangerous, a taste of the counterculture that was bubbling beneath the surface of American society.
In those days, leading men were expected to be responsible and upstanding, but the new generation of actors were dropouts with long hair and a taste for drugs. Hollywood was not ready for them, so Fonda went elsewhere.
He began hanging out with musicians like The Beatles, embedding himself in the counterculture movement.
The consequences came quickly. In 1966, police caught him in possession of marijuana, but a judge acquitted him months later. That same year, he joined a protest against curfew laws on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, ending up in handcuffs.
The big studios were not ready to make counterculture films, so smaller independent projects began tackling the topics Hollywood would not touch.
Cult director Roger Corman was making the motorcycle drama “The Wild Angels” and wanted Fonda for a small part. A surprising twist pushed him from supporting actor to lead role when George Chakiris, originally cast as the star, could not ride a motorcycle.
Fonda could. “The Wild Angels” was the kind of film moviegoers had never seen before, and Fonda’s career depended on their reaction. The movie performed very well at the box office, but some critics called it an embarrassment, and one called Fonda’s acting amateurish.
The US State Department even tried to stop the film from screening at the Venice Film Festival because it did not show America in a positive light. Fonda was now a bonafide counterculture hero.
People began to associate him with psychedelic substances, and he was not alone.
Roger Corman enlisted rising star Jack Nicholson to write a screenplay about using acid, and he knew Fonda could play the role with credibility. The result was 1967’s “The Trip,” a film that depicted drug use in a not entirely negative light. Fonda was taking a chance, participating in a project that could end a career.
Corman made the film for just $300,000, and it grossed a whopping $6 million. Critics were torn, but Fonda’s name would forever be associated with psychedelics. More importantly, the film showed the entertainment world that counterculture films could actually make money.
Encouraged by this success, Fonda began writing a script for a film he envisioned as a modern Western. He enlisted Terry Southern as co-writer and Dennis Hopper as director, and they set out to break every rule in Hollywood. By the time they started filming “Easy Rider,” there was not much of a script or a film crew.
They used friends, random strangers, and hippies. Many of the actors were high or inebriated while working on the film. Making “Easy Rider” was absolute chaos and debauchery.
Peter had the idea to show the film to his father before anyone else. Henry Fonda sat his son down and told him the film was inaccessible and that he did not think many people would get it. On its opening night, “Easy Rider” broke the house record at the Beekman Theater in New York City.
By the 14th week, it was the highest-grossing film in the United States. The budget was under $400,000, and the box office totaled around $60 million. “Easy Rider” was a massive hit, and Fonda could now choose any project he wanted.
Instead, he stayed true to his counterculture cred, but the results were not great. His first movie after “Easy Rider” saw him working with Dennis Hopper again on “The Last Movie,” which would not achieve the same success. It was a critical and commercial failure that almost ended Hopper’s career, exiling him from Hollywood for years.
After a brutal falling out between the two collaborators, Fonda decided to put himself in the director’s chair. His first attempt was the western “The Hired Hand,” in which he also starred. It was a flop.
By now, it was starting to look like “Easy Rider” had been a one-hit wonder.
Regardless, Fonda soldiered on, and his next film was “Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry,” a road movie that he did not have particularly high hopes for. When he found out that some audience members were seeing it more than once, he was surprised.
One of Fonda’s co-stars in the film was Vic Morrow, who was terrified of helicopters. The only thing that could get him in one was a $1 million life insurance policy. Morrow survived the helicopter scene in this film but tragically died years later in a helicopter accident on the set of “Twilight Zone: The Movie.”
With the success of “Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry,” Peter Fonda embarked on a career away from counterculture, followed by two decades of mostly forgettable action movies.
It looked as though Fonda was going to fade into mediocrity, and then something surprising happened. Writer-director Victor Nunez was looking for a star for his film “Ulee’s Gold,” and there was something about the story of a lonely beekeeper that Fonda connected to.
As he read the script, he began making connections to his own father. Henry Fonda had also taken up beekeeping, and Peter started to channel his father for the character of Ulee. “Ulee’s Gold” was a critical darling, and Fonda’s performance received much praise.
When award season came around, the film received one Academy Award nomination, Best Actor for Peter Fonda. While he did not take the Oscar home, losing to his buddy Jack Nicholson in “As Good As It Gets,” he did win a Golden Globe for his performance.
This was a turning point.
Fonda could say goodbye to the crazy action movies of the past decades and get serious about acting again. He took on Shakespeare in the TV movie “The Tempest,” which changed the setting of the Bard’s play into a time when America was battling within itself. Sadly, it received mostly negative reviews, with one critic noting that Fonda was not comfortable with the language.
In 1999, he appeared on television again as philosopher Ayn Rand’s husband in “The Passion of Ayn Rand.” While the reception of the film was only so-so, he walked away with another Golden Globe.
Fonda was approaching 60 and was cementing his status as a Hollywood icon.
His sister Jane also had her pop culture moment, and it dragged Peter in as well. In the 1980s, those in favor of nuclear power were getting angry at Jane for her anti-nuclear stance. Her detractors created signs that read, “Feed Jane Fonda to the whales.”
Ever the protective brother, when Peter saw one of the signs at a Denver airport, he began to destroy it with his pocketknife. He missed his flight and ended up in court.
Peter continued to make movies up until the end of his life, but he was also political.
In 2011, he joined with Tim Robbins to make “The Big Fix,” in which he blamed BP for an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Over his lifetime, he had three wives, and all three of his marriages and any other relationship he may have had seemed to somehow stay under the radar. He had two children with his first wife, Susan Brewer, and a stepson as well.
Two of his children, Bridget and Justin Fonda, have followed in their father’s acting footsteps.
While his sister Jane may have been older, she would outlive her baby brother. In August of 2019, Peter died at home with his sister by his side after a battle with lung cancer.
Jane later said, “He was my sweet-hearted baby brother. I’ve had beautiful alone time with him these last days. He went out laughing.”
Fonda left behind an incredible legacy, being an integral part of the shift from the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood to a new and groundbreaking style of filmmaking that may just have saved the industry. He also left behind a rocky history full of heartbreak and scandal.
The feud with Dennis Hopper was one of the most bitter in Hollywood history.
When Hopper was on his deathbed, he was so vengeful that he actually barred Fonda from attending his funeral. Loyal to the very end, Peter went anyway. He walked right up to the chapel door and begged Hopper’s family for one final goodbye.
But their response was chilling. Not only did Hopper’s family tell Fonda that they were not going to let him in, they said that Hopper had specifically made arrangements barring Fonda and anyone associated with the making of “Easy Rider” from his funeral. On top of all that, according to Fonda, the reason for the feud was surprisingly petty.
According to an interview he gave in 2014, it was all because Hopper thought he got a raw deal when it came to doling out the “Easy Rider” money and getting proper credit as a screenwriter on the film.
Peter Fonda was a man of contradictions. He was a rebel who changed the way Americans looked at their heroes, but he was also a man deeply wounded by the secrets of his past.
He was irresponsible, immoral, and looked really good in sunglasses, but sustaining a bad boy image is hard, and Fonda soon lost himself in forgettable action movies. Then one film changed everything, but it was the truth about his mother that changed him forever. The loss of his mother in 1950 devastated him, and his grief transformed into a profound sense of betrayal when he learned that his father had kept a twisted secret about her death.
That secret haunted him for the rest of his life, driving him to rebel against everything his father stood for and to forge a path that was uniquely his own.
In the end, Peter Fonda’s story is not just about motorcycles and counterculture. It is about a boy who lost his mother and was lied to, a man who fought against the establishment and won, and a legend who left an indelible mark on Hollywood.
He was Hollywood’s most disturbed rebel, a man who carried the weight of a family secret while riding into the sunset of American cinema. His legacy will live on in the films he made, the barriers he broke, and the truth he finally helped uncover. The world has lost a true original, but the story of Peter Fonda will never be forgotten.
