This has been a long time coming, as the Yale School of Drama-educated Giamatti has been turning in outstanding performances since he cracked the business in an NYPD Blue episode, and on movie ...

Kansas-born writer, actor and director Dennis Hopper ... characters, Hopper had memorable roles in such classic films as Apocalypse Now (1979), Rumble Fish (1983), Blue Velvet (1986), Hoosiers ...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLUE VELVET") DENNIS HOPPER: (As Frank Booth) All right. We're giving our neighbor a joyride. Let's get on with it. Anyone want to go on a joyride with us? How about you?

What is it like to spend an afternoon interviewing Dennis Hopper? There are so many questions: is the scariest character in cinema Frank Booth from "Blue Velvet"? Why is he so obsessed by James Dean?

Hopper, who died in 2010, became famous for the 1969 hippie biker road trip movie, Easy Rider. "There was a lot of smoking grass on that picture. ... I didn’t do it. But I drank," he said in 1990.