Gene Hackman: A character actor who was spellbinding as tough guys and fools

Independent

28-02-2025

Hollywood star Gene Hackman, known for The French Connection, Mississippi Burning and The Poseidon Adventure, was a character actor who often played tough guys before finding his comedic stride in films like The Royal Tenenbaums and Superman.
The two-time Oscar-winner was found dead on Wednesday afternoon in Sante Fe, New Mexico, at the age of 95, along with his wife Betsy Arakawa, 65, local police said.
Born in San Bernardino, California, his parents divorced early and he later lived with his British-born grandmother Beatrice Gray in Illinois.
He would join the United States Marine Corps as a teenager, where he spent four-and-a-half years as a field radio operator, before coming back to California where he met and studied with Dustin Hoffman.
Hackman and Hoffman would enter the stage and compete for roles in New York along with Robert Duvall.
Hoffman told the PA news agency in 2017: 'I never thought that I would get hired when I was starting out.
'Bob Duvall, Gene Hackman and myself, we were hoping just to make a living, off-off Broadway, off Broadway, we never thought any of this would happen.'
Hackman would have small early roles in Lilith opposite Warren Beatty, and period drama Hawaii with Irish actor Richard Harris.
He got his big break in 1967 true crime film Bonnie And Clyde as Barrow Gang member Buck Barrow, opposite Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the outlaw lovers.
This would also earn him his first Oscar nod for a supporting role, and lead him on to parts in neo-noir The Split, and the western The Hunting Party alongside British stars Oliver Reed and Ronald Howard.
Hackman would quickly follow this up with another Academy Award nod for 1970 drama I Never Sang For My Father, where he played middle-aged college professor opposite US actor Melvyn Douglas.
That same decade, he was back at the Academy Awards – competing for best actor this time, with the role that would define him – Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle, a brutal police detective whose car chase scene in 1971's The French Connection would inspire many other movies.
The Oscar-winning action thriller, which sees Hackman and Roy Scheider as New York City Police Department detectives, was inspired by true events surrounding drug crime and the mob world.
When he picked up the Academy Award, he kept it simple by thanking his acting teacher George Morrison, and The French Connection director William Friedkin, who he said talked him out of quitting.
Hackman would follow the movie up with the 1975 sequel French Connection II, which saw the character Doyle travel to France to track down a drug dealer.
During the 1970s, he had a leading role in The Poseidon Adventure as the brave Reverend Frank Scott and a memorable cameo as the blind man in Mel Brooks' horror spoof Young Frankenstein. He also appeared in crime thriller Prime Cut, as well as Sir Richard Attenborough's Second World War epic A Bridge Too Far, alongside Sir Michael Caine, Sir Sean Connery and Sir Anthony Hopkins.
For many audiences, he will be remembered as the zany criminal mastermind and businessman Lex Luthor in Superman: The Movie (1978), and Superman II (1980), opposite Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent / the Man of Steel.
Another leading Oscar nod came for 1988's Mississippi Burning for his turn as an FBI agent who is not afraid to use every means at his disposal to investigate the murders of three Civil Rights Movement activists in the 1960s.
His final Oscar win came as best supporting actor for Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, in which he played the mean-spirted lawman Sheriff 'Little' Bill Daggett.
Again, he kept it simple in his speech at the 1993 Oscars ceremony by thanking his fellow cast mates Richard Harris, Morgan Freeman, Frances Fisher, and 'especially' Eastwood, who starred in the picture as well as directing.
'I'd like to dedicate my part of this evening to my uncle Orin Hackman,' he added. 'He was a wonderful guy. Thank you very much.'
Later roles included the 1981 French psychological thriller Garde A Vue, 1995 military thriller Crimson Tide, the 1996 Robin Williams comedy The Birdcage, 2000 mystery Under Suspicion, and the John Cusack-starring courtroom drama Runaway Jury (2003).
Wes Anderson's 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums saw him play the self-absorbed patriarch Royal Tenenbaum opposite Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller, and Gwyneth Paltrow as his children. Hackman was lauded for his comic performance in the movie, going on to win a Golden Globe for best actor in a musical or comedy.
His final film role was in the 2004 political satire Welcome To Mooseport, which followed him being honoured with the Golden Globes' Cecil B DeMille Award in 2003 for his 'outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment'.
In 2008, he told Reuters he missed the 'the actual acting part of it' before adding: 'But the business for me is very stressful.
'The compromises that you have to make in films are just part of the beast, and it had gotten to a point where I just didn't feel like I wanted to do it anymore.'
The actor was a Democrat voter, but remarked to CNN presenter Larry King, that he supported Republican president Ronald Reagan, whom he called 'a beautiful American' after meeting him at the White House.
Hackman had three children with his first wife, Faye Maltese.
In 1991, he married Arakawa, and they lived together in Sante Fe.