‘Heck, why don't we just come up with a book?': how Gene Hackman became an author

The Guardian

27-02-2025

The Oscar winner Gene Hackman and his marine archaeologist friend Daniel Lenihan were chatting in a cafe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when they came up with the idea for their first book.
The swashbuckling sea yarn, Wake of the Perdido Star, would be the first of five novels written by the celebrated actor, who was found dead on Wednesday.
Hackman was introduced to Lenihan in preparation for filming 1993 legal thriller The Firm alongside Tom Cruise, as he needed to learn how to scuba dive. The pair would talk about writers they both enjoyed – Robert Louis Stevenson, Conrad, Melville, Hemingway – until one day, they thought, 'Heck, why don't we just come up with a book like we like to read?', Lenihan told the Guardian in 2000.
It took the pair three years to put together Wake of the Perdido Star, which is set in the early 19th century and follows a young man, Jack O'Reilly, who becomes a pirate, 'Black Jack', after his parents are murdered. Two further collaborations followed: the 2004 courtroom drama, Justice for None, and Escape from Andersonville, published in 2008.
One intriguing writing project that never came to fruition was a screenplay of The Silence of the Lambs. According to screenwriter Ted Tally, the rights to Thomas Harris' novel were originally snapped up by Orion Pictures with a view to giving Hackman his first outing as a writer and director (even possibly playing the lead role, Hannibal Lecter). But as he relates in the book Screenwriters' Masterclass, the studio quickly handed over writing duties to Tally, telling him that Hackman 'was up to page 30 of the screenplay and only on page 30 of the book, so that's not going to work out.' Jonathan Demme went on to direct with Anthony Hopkins giving an Oscar-winning performance as Lecter.
Hackman formally retired from acting in 2004. Asked why he got into writing that same year, he said he could do it 'without 90 people standing around' waiting for him to perform. 'I feel it's creative. And I like the loneliness of it.'
His first solo writing effort came in 2011 with Payback at Morning Peak, a dime store western which sees the teenage Jubal pursuing outlaws on horseback through New Mexico's gold mining towns. Jubal 'looked to the darkening skies of the west', Hackman writes in chapter 18. 'A flash of light in pewter-coloured clouds. Jubal raised his pistol. As the thunder clapped, he fired'.
Hackman said that he drew on his time in the marines, which he joined aged 16, for the book. 'A lot of what I experienced as a young man I kind of exaggerated into what this young Jubal may have found himself doing.'
For Hackman's final novel – Pursuit, published in 2013 – he pivoted from 19th-century western to police thriller. Writing is 'very relaxing for me,' he said in 2009. 'I don't picture myself as a great writer, but I really enjoy the process'.
While critics weren't always kind, fans enjoyed Hackman's novels. 'I was totally awestruck by the writing talents of Gene Hackman', wrote one Goodreads reviewer of Payback at Morning Peak. 'He has always been one of my favourite actors, and now he is one of my favourite authors.'