Katherine LaNasa says the spirit of her ex-husband, actor Dennis Hopper, visited her after they divorced—she describes scary moments, a dream in Greece, and what she drew from his death for her work on HBO Max’s “The Pitt.”
Katherine LaNasa didn’t expect the first sign.
She said the spirit of Dennis Hopper. her ex-husband. “would not leave me alone for a really long time.” In an interview with W Magazine. the actor and star of HBO Max’s medical drama “The Pitt” described years of a lingering presence that felt intimate. frightening. and—eventually—strangely comforting.
She said she believed Hopper’s ghost came to her because of the closeness of their relationship at the end of their lives together. even though they had been divorced for a long time. “The ghost of Dennis Hopper would not leave me alone for a really long time,” LaNasa said. “We’d been divorced a very long time. but I was the last wife that he’d been with that he wasn’t currently divorcing. so I think that level of intimacy when you’re dying is maybe only something you can do with a partner.”.
LaNasa recalled that Hopper appeared first in ways that were “scary.” She said he used to “come over me in a sweat. ” and that she told him to leave her alone. She described a sense of relief followed by immediate unease: “I told him he had to leave me alone. and then he did. and then I felt really weird about it.”.
What made the encounter stick. she said. was how quickly her private worry turned into a public image she couldn’t shake. She told W Magazine that the same day she confided to someone that she was feeling weird about it. she was walking home and ran into a gallery showing photos of Hopper—one in particular where he was winking at the camera. “So I felt like he was letting me go. and then he came to me shortly after that in a dream. ” she said.
In that dream, LaNasa described a scene in Greece. She said both of them were in a cafeteria. and Hopper told her he was OK and not in pain anymore. “We were both in a cafeteria in Greece. and he told me that he was OK and that he wasn’t in pain anymore. and he was good. and I never heard from him again. ” she said.
LaNasa and Hopper married from 1989 to 1992. Hopper later married Victoria Duffy in 1996, and he previously had been married to Brooke Hayward, Michelle Phillips and Daria Halprin.
Their marriage produced a son, Henry, born in 1990. LaNasa said she and Hopper met while she was on tour as a dancer, and came to Los Angeles where she encountered him at a party.
After their divorce, LaNasa went on to marry actor French Stewart; they divorced in 2009. She later married her current husband, Grant Show, in 2012, and they welcomed a daughter in 2014. Hopper died in 2010 at age 74 after battling prostate cancer.
The dream and the ghost stories aren’t just part of her personal history. LaNasa said—they fed into how she later approached her acting work. During a 2025 appearance at the EndWell Summit, she described spending “a lot of time” with Hopper while he was dying. She said she learned from hospice nurses who were caring for him. and she credited those lessons as part of what inspired her performance as nurse Dana Evans on “The Pitt.”.
“It’s this kind of compassionate detachment and it was that steadiness, along with the compassion, that I really tried to put into Dana,” she said, according to Hello Magazine. “I knew they weren’t freaking out, that they could bear a lot, and it feels like it’s kind of a calling.”
In another recollection from the summit, LaNasa said Hopper shared that he was scared amid his battle with cancer. She said she would have felt scared too, even as she grieved. Speaking at the summit. she told Hello Magazine and later spoke more directly to reporters about the emotional weight of watching prolonged illness.
“I was really in grief and very, very sad for a very long time,” she said. “A lot of times, deaths from an illness that goes on for months can be very, very sad to watch. And I was really filled with a lot of sadness. not just of the loss of the person. but the whole experience was really sad. … And you know, when someone doesn’t want to die and they’re dying, [it’s] really, really hard.”.
That combination—fear. tenderness. and the long stretch of uncertainty—runs through the way she described both the haunting and the hospice lessons. Hopper’s death. she said. left her with something she carried forward: the idea that people facing the end of life still deserve steadiness. compassion. and honest care.
Katherine LaNasa Dennis Hopper ghost The Pitt HBO Max EndWell Summit hospice nurses prostate cancer French Stewart Grant Show
Wait so she literally saw his ghost?? That’s wild.
I don’t know… spirits aren’t real but people do dream stuff and then it turns into a story. The Greece dream part sounds more like a coping thing than a visit. Still creepy though.
But like if it was comforting then why was she like sweating and scared?? That doesn’t really add up to me. Also she said they were divorced forever but he’s still showing up, ok sure lol.
This is probably just the timing of her HBO show “The Pitt,” like writers pull from stress and grief and then the article makes it ghost themed. The gallery thing—was it even the same day? Feels like marketing. Dennis Hopper was a lot even when he was alive so I could see her projecting, idk.