Dennis Hopper and Victoria Duffy Hopper were married for 14 years, but he wanted her out of his life when he was in his deathbed.
Relationships can go haywire at any time and we are not always sure of how things go wrong, but it's always tragic to see a previously loving couple battle things out in a court because they are no longer able to see eye-to-eye.
Dennis Hopper, who passed away in 2010, was married to his fifth wife, Victoria Duffy Hopper, for 14 years. However, while laying on his deathbed, he filed for divorce, which remained an incomplete process. Hopper met Victoria, 53, in 1992 when she was only 23 and he was around 56. She noticed the Easy Rider star eating alone at Rebecca’s in Venice Beach, where she was working as a hostess, according to New York Post.
The Blue Velvet actor had been divorced from his fourth wife for only one week at that time. The pair eventually started dating and Hopper proposed to Victoria in 1995. They married in a small ceremony at the Old South Church in Boston, where she grew up. One of the best parts of their marriage was her helping him become sober after his wild partying days.
"Did I ever expect to reach 70? Hell, I never expected to see 30," Hopper had once said. "And when I did hit 30, 70 seemed off-the-charts old to me. It’s a miracle I’m still here," he added.
He was devoted to Victoria, unlike his previous four marriages. So, what changed between the Oscar-nominated actor and Victoria? In 2008, friends first noticed some tension between the couple. "They had a big fight when they were in Paris in 2008 for the opening of his retrospective at the Cinematheque," the friend said. "I surely felt tension between them," the unnamed friend added.
Before his death, Hopper tried to throw her out of his life, but it seems that she had been planning to leave since 2009. "She talked to her father about some sort of plan regarding Dennis, an exit plan,” the friend said. “Her father did not agree with it and thought she had gone off the deep end. Now she is estranged from her father," the friend added.
Hopper, who had inoperable terminal cancer, reportedly tried for many years to make her happy by buying her whatever she sought, including a small ranch in Brentwood. "You could see he loved her dearly and was willing to do anything for her," the friend said. However, the 53-year-old was reportedly spending at a rate at which he could not have been able to support. "Victoria thought money was no object. She was a mega-spender," they added.
When Hopper sought a divorce, he also asked for joint custody of their only child, Galen, whom he loved dearly. When matters went to court, he was asked to pay Victoria $12,000 a month and to let her live in their LA home, as per The Guardian.
The allegations flew from both sides. He accused her of "outrageous conduct" over 2009, including absconding with $1.5m of his art. She responded saying he threatened her and smoked marijuana around their daughter. He called her "extremely volatile," "insane and out of her mind" and "inhuman," as per ABC News. He accused her of not letting him see his youngest child for long periods of time.
Hopper was "in utter distress" after Victoria took their daughter to Boston, a trip he learned about from her attorney. "This malevolent act ... has caused me to miss what may very well be my last Christmas with my daughter Galen," Hopper said in his filing. And, that turned out to be true, as he died in May 2010.
His daughter from a previous marriage, Marin Hopper, and his assistant, Emily Davis, claimed that his wife is a "threat to Dennis' life," and his "own wife was trying to kill him."
In response, Victoria wrote an article that was published in Huffington Post. "I fear the latest round of sensational allegations, notably a tragically bizarre one made by Dennis' assistant, will not be the last one," she wrote, according to ABC News. "It's textbook behavior when someone leaves an abusive relationship for the abuser to attempt to personally destroy the one who left, and I fully expect it to continue."
After his death, she and her daughter received 40% of his estate, and the rest was given to his other children.
References:
https://nypost.com/2010/01/24/easy-riders-hard-truths-about-love/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/apr/06/dennis-hopper-wife
