American psychologist, author, dancer, and former actress known primarily for her naturalistic performances in three films of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In 1968, she appeared in Revolution, a documentary by Jack O’Connell. Shot mainly in San Francisco, the film exposed the thriving counterculture movement and featured a series of interviews with that city’s hippie residents.
Subsequently, Halprin was chosen by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni for the lead in his second English-language feature, Zabriskie Point. The film, released in 1970, was a statement on the burgeoning violence in America and the growing rift between the establishment and the counterculture as interpreted through a European sensibility.
In 1972, Halprin appeared in her third and final movie, John Flynn’s thriller The Jerusalem File, in a major role alongside Nicol Williamson and Donald Pleasence.
Also in 1972, she married actor/director Dennis Hopper. The marriage produced one child, Ruthanna Hopper, before the couple divorced in 1976.
In the 1970s, Halprin developed an interest in creative arts therapy. In 1978, she and her mother Anna founded the Tamalpa Institute and developed the Halprin Process, an expressive arts approach for transformative healing that integrates movement/dance, visual arts, performance techniques and therapeutic practices. She has authored The Expressive Body in Life, Art and Therapy (2002) and Coming Alive: The Creative Expression Method (1989), and was a contributing author to Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy (1998).
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