In the wake of his commercially disastrous second film as director, The Last Movie, and with his drug habit spiralling out of control, Hopper cemented his reputation in Hollywood as an unpredictable hell-raiser, impossible to work with. Happily, Wim Wenders saw fit to take a gamble by casting him in this loose interpretation of Patricia Highsmith’s at-the-time unpublished novel Ripley’s Game. Drawing not only on his chaotic personal life, but also on his experience as a painter and art collector, Hopper turns in a beautifully understated, intriguingly ambiguous performance as Tom Ripley, who subtly manipulates a German picture framer (Bruno Ganz) into carrying out a contract killing.