In a career that spanned more than six decades, Stanton played supporting roles in films including Cool Hand Luke (1967), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Dillinger (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Alien (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Christine (1983), Repo Man (1984), One Magic Christmas (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Wild at Heart (1990), The Straight Story (1999), The Green Mile (1999), The Man Who Cried (2000), Alpha Dog (2006), Inland Empire (2006), Rango (2011), The Avengers (2012), and Seven Psychopaths (2012).

Stanton attended Lafayette High School[2] and the University of Kentucky in Lexington where he performed at the Guignol Theatre under the direction of theater director Wallace Briggs,[3] and studied journalism and radio arts.

"I could have been a writer," he told an interviewer for a 2011 documentary, Harry Dean Stanton: Crossing Mulholland, in which he sings and plays the harmonica.

[5] During World War II, Stanton served in the United States Navy, including a stint as a cook aboard the USS LST-970, a Landing Ship, Tank, during the Battle of Okinawa.

[1] He appeared (uncredited) as a complaining BAR man at the beginning of the 1959 film Pork Chop Hill starring Gregory Peck.

"[8] Not long afterward, Shepard phoned him in Los Angeles to offer Stanton the part of the protagonist, Travis,[8] "a role that called for the actor to remain largely silent ... as a lost, broken soul trying to put his life back together and reunite with his estranged family after having vanished years earlier.

"[9] Stanton appeared in indie and cult films such as Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Cockfighter (1974), Escape from New York (1981), Repo Man (1984), The Straight Story (1999), and Inland Empire (2006), as well as mainstream Hollywood productions, including Cool Hand Luke, (1967), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Dillinger (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Alien (1979), The Rose (1979), Private Benjamin (1980), Young Doctors in Love (1982), Christine (1983), Red Dawn (1984), One Magic Christmas (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Wild at Heart (1990), Down Periscope (1996), Fire Down Below (1997), The Green Mile (1999), The Man Who Cried (2000), Alpha Dog (2006), and Rango (2011).

He was a favorite actor of the directors Sam Peckinpah, John Milius, David Lynch, and Monte Hellman, and was also close friends with Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Nicholson.

He later had a cameo in Two and a Half Men (having previously appeared with Jon Cryer in Pretty in Pink and with Charlie Sheen in Red Dawn).

Beginning in 2006, Stanton featured as Roman Grant, the manipulative leader/prophet of a polygamous sect on the HBO television series Big Love.

[12] He worked with a number of musical artists, Dylan, Art Garfunkel, and Kris Kristofferson[13] among them, and played harmonica on The Call's 1989 album Let the Day Begin.

"[20] Stanton died aged 91 on September 15, 2017, from heart failure, at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.

"[25] Ian McNabb recorded the song "Harry Dean Stanton" on his album Utopian, released in January 2021.