[10][11] Nine months later, on October 17, 1960, Hayward's younger sister Bridget was found dead of a drug overdose in her apartment in New York City.

[16] In May 1961, Hayward made her Broadway debut in the stage production of Mandingo opposite her future husband Dennis Hopper.

Throughout the 1960s, while married to actor, director, and photographer Dennis Hopper, Hayward took an active role in the contemporary art world, collecting works by such artists as Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Frank Stella, and Roy Lichtenstein.

She was also an avid collector of antiques from various periods and known for a highly idiosyncratic sense of design, as demonstrated by the house she shared with Hopper and their children, 1712 North Crescent Heights Boulevard in Los Angeles.

[18] In 1977, Hayward wrote the best-seller[2] Haywire, a childhood memoir that expounded on her family, the mental breakdowns of her mother and sister, and her own personal demons.

[19] Her last screen appearance was in a small role in John Guare's 1993 film adaptation of Six Degrees of Separation, with Stockard Channing, Donald Sutherland, and Will Smith.

They had a daughter, designer Marin Brooke Hopper, in June 1962 and together went on to be a force at the center of the creative scene in Los Angeles in the 1960s, collecting Pop art and enjoying a high degree of access to the worlds of contemporary art, rock music, and Hollywood.

[21] The story of Hayward and Hopper's marriage, along with their childhoods and later lives, was told by Mark Rozzo in the best-selling 2022 cultural history/biography Everybody Thought We Were Crazy.