Stanton made his first television appearance in 1954, with a role in the
Inner Sanctum episode "Hour of Darkness". He played Stoneman in the 1959
Have Gun – Will Travel episode "Treasure Trail", credited as Dean Stanton. He made his film debut in the 1957 Western
Tomahawk Trail. came with the lead role in
Wim Wenders'
Paris, Texas. Playwright
Sam Shepard, who wrote the film's script, had spotted Stanton at a bar in
Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1983 while both were attending a
film festival in that city. The two fell into conversation. "I was telling him I was sick of the roles I was playing," Stanton recalled in a 1986 interview. "I told him I wanted to play something of some beauty or sensitivity. I had no inkling he was considering me for the lead in his movie." Stanton appeared in
indie and
cult films such as
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971),
Cockfighter (1974),
Escape from New York (1981),
Repo Man (1984),
The Straight Story (1999), and
Inland Empire (2006), as well as mainstream Hollywood productions, including
Cool Hand Luke, (1967), ''
Kelly's Heroes (1970), Dillinger (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Alien (1979), The Rose (1979), Private Benjamin (1980), Young Doctors in Love (1982), Christine (1983), Red Dawn (1984), One Magic Christmas (1985), also In Faerie Tale Theatre"s Rip Van Winkle also 1985 Back door PilotFor Tall Tales And LegendsPretty in Pink (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Wild at Heart (1990), Down Periscope (1996), Fire Down Below (1997), The Green Mile (1999), The Man Who Cried (2000), Alpha Dog (2006), and Rango'' (2011). He was a favorite actor of the directors
Sam Peckinpah,
John Milius,
David Lynch, and
Monte Hellman, and was also close friends with
Francis Ford Coppola and
Jack Nicholson. He was
best man at Nicholson's wedding in 1962. Stanton was a favorite of film critic Roger Ebert, who said that "no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or
M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad." However, Ebert later admitted that
Dream a Little Dream (1989), in which Stanton appeared, was a "clear violation" of this rule. He had eight appearances between 1958 and 1968 on
Gunsmoke, four on the network's
Rawhide, three on
The Untouchables, two on
Bonanza, and an episode of
The Rifleman. He played the wrongly accused Lucius Brand (credited as Dean Stanton) in
The Wild Wild West S3 E7 "The Night of the Hangman" (1967). He later had a cameo in
Two and a Half Men (having previously appeared with
Jon Cryer in
Pretty in Pink and with
Charlie Sheen in
Red Dawn). Beginning in 2006, Stanton featured as Roman Grant, the manipulative leader/prophet of a polygamous sect on the HBO television series
Big Love. He appeared in the
Dwight Yoakam music video for "Sorry You Asked", He worked with a number of musical artists, Dylan,
Art Garfunkel, and
Kris Kristofferson among them, and played harmonica on
The Call's 1989 album
Let the Day Begin. In 2010, Stanton appeared in an episode of the TV series
Chuck, reprising his role in the 1984 film
Repo Man. In 2011, the Lexington Film League created an annual festival, the Harry Dean Stanton Fest, to honor Stanton in the city where he spent much of his adolescence. ==Personal life==