At once an insider yet never quite
Hollywood enough, Stockwell’s prolific career was at its best when he showed his own alienationDean Stockwell, Quantum Leap and Blue Velvet actor, dies aged 85Dean Stockwell was the child
Actor in numberless studio movies of the 1940s, who arguably never quite got over that brutal apprenticeship, especially as the system soon saw that audiences loved it when he cried. Stockwell was always having to burst heart-rendingly into tears – he remembered being told by Elia Kazan to think of a puppy dying just before a take. He outgrew his cherubic sweet looks into the closed and somehow damaged handsomeness of a young actor who didn’t entirely fit either the leading man model of the old-fashioned studio system, nor the new wave and counterculture scene in which his contemporary Dennis Hopper made a splash.
Despite briefly quitting showbusiness in the 60s to explore his hippy side, Stockwell took a regular pay cheque in TV for the rest of his life and for all his periodic depression about the state of his movie career, found that he was continuously in demand as a rugged character actor in his middle years, achieving cinephile respect for working with Wim Wenders, David Lynch, William Friedkin, Jonathan Demme, Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola. He was the kind of supporting actor who lent texture and authenticity to a movie, especially for a certain kind of indie
American gothic.