James Dean is the legendary hero with a legendary story; live fast and die young. For over half a century, he has captured the world with his casual style, unflinching look and rebel attitude. James Dean has defined the essence of cool and without-a-cause for generations. His star continues to shine brighter and brighter.

Never has there ever been, never will there ever be. The one, the only, James Dean.

Mini Biography

James Dean was born in 1931 and raised on a farm by his aunt and uncle in Fairmount, Indiana. After grade school, he moved to New York to pursue his dream of acting. He received rave reviews for his work as the blackmailing Arab boy in the New York production of Gide‘s “The Immoralist”, good enough to earn him a trip to Hollywood. His early film efforts were strictly bit parts: a sailor in the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewisoverly frantic musical comedy Sailor Beware (1952); a GI in Samuel Fuller‘s moody study of a platoon in the Korean War, Fixed Bayonets! (1951) and a youth in the Piper Laurie–Rock Hudson comedy Has Anybody Seen My Gal (1952).

He had major roles in only three movies. In the Elia Kazan production of John Steinbeck‘s East of Eden (1955) he played Caleb, the “bad” brother who couldn’t force affection from his stiff-necked father. His true starring role, the one which fixed his image forever in American culture, was that of the brooding red-jacketed teenager Jim Stark in Nicholas Ray‘s Rebel Without a Cause (1955). George Stevens‘ filming of Edna Ferber‘s Giant (1956), in which he played the non-conforming cowhand Jett Rink who strikes it rich when he discovers oil, was just coming to a close when Dean, driving his Porsche Spyder race car, collided with another car while on the road near Cholame, California on September 30, 1955. He had received a speeding ticket just two hours before. James Dean was killed almost immediately from the impact from a broken neck. He was 24. His very brief career, violent death and highly publicized funeral transformed him into a cult object of apparently timeless fascination.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>

His Quotes

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet.

James Dean

Being a good actor isn’t easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I’m done.

Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that’s all you have.

But you can’t show some far off idyllic conception of behavior if you want the kids to come and see the picture. You’ve got to show what it’s really like, and try to reach them on their own grounds.