Harry Dean Stanton / Gentleness, sensitivity, gallantry and painful masculinity

Harry Dean Stanton

Harry Dean Stanton: gentleness, sensitivity, gallantry and painful masculinity

BIOGRAPHY

After decades of supporting roles and character parts, the late Harry Dean Stanton’s legend suddenly came into focus in Paris, Texas

Peter Bradshaw

Saturday 16 September 2017 03.29 BST

It took a German director to notice one of cinema’s most iconic American faces: in 1984, when this actor was 58 years old. He had been there all along.

After decades of supporting roles and character parts, playing opposite the big stars and loyally showcasing their grandstanding with his own calm stillness and occasionally with his own beautiful singing voice, Harry Dean Stanton had become craggily gaunt in his ascetic handsomeness, like some Bergmanian pastor or the farmer in Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic.

Harry Dean Stanton

Harry Dean Stanton: 'Life? It's one big phantasmagoria'

BIOGRAPHY

The wine, the women, the song… The great Harry Dean Stanton talks to Sean O'Hagan about jogging with Dylan, Rebecca de Mornay leaving him for Tom Cruise and why Paris, Texas is his greatest film

Sean O'Hagan
Saturday 23 November 2013 20.00 GMT

H

arry Dean Stanton is singing "The Rose of Tralee". His wavering voice echoes across the rows of people gathered in the Village East cinema in New York, where a special screening of a new documentary about his life and work, Partly Fiction, has just finished. You can tell that the director, Sophie Huber, and the cinematographer, Seamus McGarvey, who are sitting beside him, are used to this sort of thing from Harry, but the rest of us are by turns delighted and a little bit nervous on his behalf. Now that he's 87, Stanton's voice is as unsteady as his gait, but he steers the old Irish ballad home in his inimitable manner and the audience responds with cheers and applause.

Harry Dean Stanton / A life in pictures

Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski in 'Paris, Texas'

Harry Dean Stanton
BIOGRAPHY

A life in pictures

A Time For Killing, 1967
Harry Dean Stanton was born on 14 July 1926 in West Irvine, Kentucky. His screen career began in 1954 as he played cowboys and henchmen on TV, with bit parts in film

Two-Lane Blacktop, 1971

Harry Dean Stanton, cult American actor, dies aged 91

BIOGRAPHY

Prolific character actor, who appeared in scores of films including Paris, Texas, Alien, Repo Man and The Straight Story, died in an LA hospital on Friday

Andrew Pulver
Saturday 16 September 2017 10.25 BST

Harry Dean Stanton, the veteran American actor who ballasted generations of independent and cult films, has died aged 91. The subject of the late critic Roger Ebert’s “Stanton Walsh Rule” – “No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad” – Stanton was famed for his ability to project his hangdog, laconic charm into minor roles, which ensured he worked continuously for over six decades. Directors who cast him include David Lynch, Sam Peckinpah, Ridley Scott, Alex Cox and Wim Wenders, but he was never nominated for an Oscar or any of the other principal acting awards.

Harry Dean Stanton (1926 - 2017)

Harry Dean Stanton

Harry Dean Stanton 

BIOGRAPHY

1926-2017

by Sean Nelson • Sep 15, 2017 at 6:15 pm

Harry Dean Stanton, one of the finest, most understated American screen actors of the past several decades died today of natural causes at the age of 91.

Stanton was probably best known for his roles as the prophet Roman Grant on the HBO series Big Love, as Molly Ringwald's dissolute dad in Pretty in Pink, as Brain in Escape From New York, as Saul/Paul in Last Temptation of Christ, and above all as Bud in Repo Man. Most recently, he turned up in the new season of David Lynch's Twin Peaks (he was also in Fire Walk With Me, Wild at Heart, and Inland Empire).