Easy

For a lot of people, Peter Fonda was Easy Rider. Those sunglasses. Those sideburns. He taught Jack Nicholson how to smoke pot. He was Captain America long before Chris Evans was even born. Peter Fonda was so cool.
And not just because he was Easy Rider. But that would have been enough. He was one half of Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry, the Larry part. I spent a chunk of the 1970s going to the drive-in to watch Peter Fonda drive and fight and shoot his way across the screen. It would have been simple for him to simply fall into the family business of acting, playing parts that his father might have taken in his youth. But Peter was his own man. He took LSD with the Beatles. He starred in The Trip, written by Jack Nicholson and directed by Roger Corman. In 1967. Peter Fonda was so cool.
My favorite Peter Fonda moment came in 1976 when he was cast as an investigative reporter investigating Futureworld. He and his partner are there to figure out what sort of creepy business Delos is up to in this sequel to Westworld. As it turns out, the bad guys are cloning executives and dignitaries who are guests, then releasing them back into the world to do the company's bidding. Spoiler Alert: When they capture Fonda and attempt to send him back into society, a pawn in the media, he pulls the old switcheroo which only becomes apparent at the last moment when he steps back in the doorway and flips major birdage to the chief of Delos before leaping aboard the tram to escape. Peter Fonda was so cool.
He won two Golden Globes. He was nominated for two Oscars. He surfed with Snake Plissken. He was in more than one hundred films over a career that spanned fifty-seven years. And he didn't have to. He could have hung out and lived off the glow from his father and sister Jane. But he didn't. And then he helped give the world another Fonda actor, Bridget. Peter Fonda was so cool.
Right up to the end, when he passed away last week from respiratory failure. To say that Peter Fonda stomped on the Terra might be an understatement, but he surely did that and more. He will be missed. Aloha, Peter.