Dennis Hopper: 5 Essential Roles (pt. 4)

Clifford Worley - True Romance (1993)

If Hopper was Hollywood's first choice for playing unsavoury characters, his role as ex-cop security guard Clifford Worley was the antithesis to his image. Intent on protecting his dim-witted son Clarence (Christian Slater) and his ditzy new daughter-in-law Alabama (Patricia Arquette) from gangsters, Worley is the movie's unsung hero. In a brilliant stand-off with mobsters, led by a menacing Christopher Walken as their boss Vincenzo Coccotti, who want the drugs that his son stole, Clifford, accepting his fate, questions their Sicilian heritage in a manner that shows that Clifford probably did not inherit his father's worldliness.