Harry Dean Stanton

American actor, musician, and singer whose career spanned over 60 years. An enduringly popular character actor, Harry Dean Stanton specialized in playing the lost, the weird and society's outcasts. His lean and weathered look, with a prominent nose, hollow cheeks and expressive eyes was first seen in bit parts in 1950. He made his feature film debut in "The Wrong Man" (1956), and through the rest of the '50s and the '60s he played small parts in numerous films, mostly in westerns, war movies and action guy-flicks.

Raised near Lexington, Kentucky, he served with the Navy at Okinawa, Japan, during WWII before taking up drama at the University of Kentucky. Moving to Los Angeles, he studied and performed at the Pasadena Playhouse. In his early films, he billed himself as simply Harry Stanton but after 1971, he was credited in films and on TV as Dean Stanton so as to avoid any confusion with character actor Harry Stanton, with whom he appeared in a 1969 episode of "Petticoat Junction." In the '70s he appeared in several cult movies, including "Billy the Kid" (1973) and "Rancho Deluxe" (1975). By the '80s, Stanton had become a supporting actor and was getting larger and increasingly off-beat roles in such films as "Ridley Scott's Alien" (1979), "The Black Marble" (1980) and most notably, "Repo Man" (1984) as the fellow who teaches Emilio Estevez to take back cars.

His breakthrough role was that of a drifter, as the lead actor in Wim Wenders' "Paris, Texas" (1983). Articulate and highly intelligent, Stanton also played more mainstream roles such as Molly Ringwald's over-distracted father in "Pretty in Pink" (1986).

He occasionally took leading roles in independent films and when not acting, showed another side of himself as an excellent singer and guitarist. He fronted "The Harry Dean Stanton Band," appearing regularly in the Los Angeles area with a mix of jazz, pop, and tex-mex.