Remembering Gene Hackman

As details continue to emerge about the sad deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife, Cinema Paradiso focuses on the films that made him a New Hollywood great.

Early in Gene Hackman's career, Time magazine described him as 'a sort of blue-collar actor, slightly embarrassed about art but avid about craft'. Despite claiming that Hackman wasn't much to look at and had 'about as much sensibility as a pig's bottom', British critic George Melly was also struck by his compelling presence on screen.

Hackman himself was reluctant to discuss the secret of his success. When once asked to sum up his career, he replied, '"He tried." I think that'd be fairly accurate.' On another occasion, he was slightly more forthcoming about his creative approach in revealing, 'Each scene, I look for something not written down.' But Hackman was not the kind to give much away. Indeed, he could be difficult to work with and had rows with several directors. Yet Alan Parker was firmly in his corner. 'He is incapable of bad work,' he said. 'Every director has a short list of actors he'd die to work with, and I'll bet Gene's on every one.'

The Illinois Boy

Eugene Allen Hackman was born on 30 January 1930 in San Bernardino, California. Father Eugene Ezra Hackman and his Canadian waitress wife, Anna Lyda Elizabeth (née Gray), also had a second boy named Richard. As Eugene, Sr. had been raised in Rossville, Illinois, he was keen to return to the area and the Hackmans took up residence in Danville, in a house belonging to his English-born maternal grandmother, Beatrice.

Eugene worked as a pressman for the Commercial-News and the seven year-old Gene became the subject of his first news story in 1937, when he dressed as Santa to help his mother give out presents to the members of the local Girl Scout Troop. Gene was devoted to his mother, who was better educated than her husband and the boy was always conscious of the 'strange chemistry' between his parents.

However, the young Hackman had bigger things on his mind. At the age of 10, he discovered the movies and he recalled his morning excursions when collecting the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2003 Golden Globe Awards. 'I'd be at the Palace Theater in my little hometown,' he explained, 'my favourite time as a young boy. If I had 40 cents, I could ride the streetcar back-and-forth, get a bag of popcorn and see a double feature. I would sit in that movie house, the screen would light up, and I'd be transported to DarkestAfrica, and swing from the trees with Johnny Weissmuller, dive to the depths of the ocean with Ray Milland and John Wayne, ride the Sante Fe Trail or fly wingman with Errol Flynn, or walk side-by-side with my favourite, James Cagney.'

Part of him dreamed of being on the silver screen. But Gene felt he would never make the grade because reckoned he had a 'potato head'. 'I would come out of the theatre,' he would tell an interviewer in 1986, 'having seen an Errol Flynn movie and look in the mirror in the lobby of the theatre and be stunned that I didn't look like that guy. I desperately wanted to do it, but I never really thought I could until much later.'

In 1943, when Hackman was 13, Eugene left home and never returned. 'That Saturday morning is still so vivid,' Hackman recalled years later. 'I was playing down the street from our house when I saw my father drive by and give me a light wave of his hand. Somehow, I knew that gesture meant he was going away forever.' In another interview, he surmised, 'That wave, it was like he was saying, "OK, it's all yours. You're on your own, kiddo."'

He continued, 'His leaving came as a shock. It made an incredible impression on what I felt strength and honesty really are.' Yet Hackman came to appreciate that this defining moment helped him become an actor. 'I doubt,' he said, 'I would have been so sensitive to human behaviour if that hadn't happened to me as a child - if I hadn't realised what one small gesture can mean.'

The 'hurt and disappointment' of being abandoned impacted upon Hackman's behaviour at school. After the divorce, Anna took her boys to Storm Lake, Iowa. However, Gene kept confronting his teachers and even spent a night in the cells after stealing some sweets and a bottle of soda. Following a blazing row with his basketball coach, Hackman quit school and went to work at a steel mill. With the Second World War still raging, however, he lied about his age and joined the Marine Corps in search of adventure. Having trained as a field radio operator, Hackman was stationed in Qingdao in China. As Mao Zedong's Communist forces came to the fore, he was relocated to Shanghai and was later based in Japan and Hawaii. However, just before he was posted to fight in the Korean War, Hackman broke his right leg, right shoulder, and left knee in a motorcycle accident, and was honourably discharged. As he later confided to chat show host Larry King, his time in uniform was a qualified success: 'I was not a good marine. I made corporal once and was promptly busted.' He also speculated whether his problems with obeying orders made him so combative on the set: 'I have trouble with direction, because I just have always had trouble with authority.'

Back on Civvy Street, Hackman returned to Danville and joined a camera crew at the local TV station, WDAN 1490. He didn't stay long, but Hackman always considered himself to be a Danvillian and, in 1988, he joined Dick Van Dyke and Donald O'Connor in a fundraiser to save the Fischer Theatre, where he had spent so many happy childhood hours in the darkness, escaping from the realities of the Depression era and dreaming of what might be.

Tentative Steps

While in the Marines, Hackman had gained experience as a disc jockey and a news announcer on the Armed Forces Radio Service. Under the terms of the G.I. Bill, he secured a place at the University of Illinois to study journalism and television production. Typically, he found conforming to the demands of the course difficult and the 22 year-old decided to head to New York to become an actor. Around this time, he also started painting and took classes at the Art Students League of New York.

Residing at the YMCA, Hackman took whatever jobs he could land. He drove a truck, sold candy door to door, jerked sodas in a drugstore, and even worked in a high-class women's shoe shop, where he would steal expensive brands to sell for extra cash. He didn't enjoy lugging furniture to high-rise apartments and hated a nocturnal cleaning gig at the Chrysler Building. But he hit rock bottom when he was working as a doorman at a Times Square hotel in 1955 and his drill instructor from the Corps spotted him in his livery and hissed, 'Hackman, you're a sorry son of a b*tch,' as he strode past.

Mortified, Hackman had redoubled his efforts to become an actor and, in 1956, new wife Faye Maltese encouraged him to apply for a place at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. 'Acting was something I wanted to do since I was 10,' Hackman later reflected, 'and saw my first movie, I was so captured by the action guys. Jimmy Cagney was my favourite. Without realising it, I could see he had tremendous timing and vitality.' If Gene Hackman possessed these qualities, few of his (much younger) classmates could detect them and he became something of an outsider in the company of one Dustin Hoffman. He made his debut alongside Hollywood stalwart Zasu Pitts in The Curious Miss Caraway, but he found the classes hard and frequently retreated to the Playhouse roof to play bongos with his new friend.

Hackman's esteem was hampered by the conviction he looked like 'your everyday mine worker'. But he received the lowest score ever given by the Playhouse staff and he and Hoffman were voted 'the least likely to succeed' at the end of term. Determined to prove his doubters wrong, Hackman returned to New York and shared digs with Hoffman and Robert Duvall, as they struggled to find work. Eventually, in 1958, he landed his first professional stage role in an off-Broadway production of Chaparral. This led to a summer with the Gateway Playhouse at Bellport, Long Island. With Faye working as a secretary and Hackman taking temporary jobs to pay the bills, he appeared off-Broadway in The Saintliness of Margery Kempe in 1959 and succeed in making his film debut as an uncredited cop in Burt Balaban's Mad Dog Coll (1961), which also gave Telly Savalas his debut.

Parts came in TV shows like Route 66 and Naked City, while Hackman appeared in eight plays under the United States Steel Hour banner between 1959-62. Stage offers also trickled in, including a minor role in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge. But another face from the past inflicted a moment of humiliation, when an instructor from the Pasadena Playhouse saw Hackman waiting tables at a Howard Johnson's restaurant and couldn't resist reminding him that he had always thought he 'wouldn't amount to anything'.

Undaunted, Hackman started taking twice-weekly classes with George Morrison, a graduate of Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. In addition to teaching Method techniques, Morrison also helped Hackman deal with his insecurities and improve his diction and timing. Most importantly, he showed how it was possible to understand any character by asking two simple questions: 'How am I like this person?' and 'How am I not like this person?'

Morrison also encouraged Hackman to people watch in order to pick up character traits and mannerisms. Hackman also started drawing on the experiences and emotions of those close to him and later admitted to doing so 'in a very cold and clinical way'. Now able to make use of his pain and anger by channelling it into a character, Hackman became fearless. As future director Arthur Penn claimed, 'He's one of the ones who are willing to plunge their arm into the fire as far as it can go.'

Rejection was also used to motivate, as Hackman once revealed. 'It was more psychological warfare,' he said, 'because I wasn't going to let those fu**ers get me down. I insisted with myself that I would continue to do whatever it took to get a job. It was like me against them, and in some way, unfortunately, I still feel that way. But I think if you're really interested in acting there is a part of you that relishes the struggle. It's a narcotic in the way that you are trained to do this work and nobody will let you do it, so you're a little bit nuts. You lie to people, you cheat, you do whatever it takes to get an audition, get a job.'

Feeling better equipped to cope in a cutthroat industry, Hackman was cast in the TV-movie, Ride With Terror (1963). Following an off-Broadway stint in Come to the Palace of Sin, he reached the Great White Way in Irwin Shaw's Children From Their Games (both 1963). The latter closed after four performances, but earned Hackman the Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising New Actor. Frustratingly, A Rainy Day in Newark proved equally short-lived the following year. But Hackman was paired with Sandy Dennis in the hit Broadway comedy, Any Wednesday, which was filmed by Robert Ellis Miller two years later, with Jane Fonda and Jason Robards.

With his profile raised, Hackman landed his first credited screen role, as Norman in Robert Rossen's Lilith (1964), where he made a suitable impression on co-star Warren Beatty. Back on the stage, he enjoyed a lengthy run in Poor Richard (1964-65), during which time he also kept picking up one-off TV episodes. Indeed, he continued to take small-screen roles even after his feature career took an upturn as Dr John Whipple in George Roy Hill's Hawaii (1966). This led to 'The Spores'. an episode of The Invaders (1967), and the parts of fading golfer Tommy Del Gaddo in Ron Winston's Banning; chief of police Arthur Harmsworth in Lamont Johnson's A Covenant With Death; and as Sergeant Tweed in Christian Nyby's Marine Corps saga, First to Fight (all 1967). But Hackman's fortunes turned around two other pictures from the same year which helped transform Hollywood at the tail end of the Studio Era.

The Busiest Man in New Hollywood

Gene Hackman could have been forgiven for thinking he'd cracked it when he was cast alongside Pasadena buddy Dustin Hoffman in Mike Nichols's The Graduate. However, after three weeks of rehearsing Mr Robinson opposite Anne Bancroft, he was fired for being 'too young' and Murray Hamilton stepped into the role. Fortunately, Warren Beatty had remembered Hackman from Lilith and lobbied for him to play Buck Barrow in Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (both 1967), in which Beatty co-starred with Faye Dunaway. Hackman earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and was unlucky not to join Estelle Parsons (as his wife, Blanche) in winning the Academy Award.

Not that the honour did him much good in the short run. A return to the stage for The Natural Look lasted just one performance, while the off-Broadway excursions, Fragments and The Basement, made little more impact. Indeed, Hackman spent much of the following year scraping by on episodes in shows like Iron Horse, Insight, and I Spy.

He faced off with heist mastermind Jim Brown, as Lieutenant Walter Brill in Gordon Flemyng's The Split before donning a dog collar for the first time as the Reverend Thomas Davis, as renegades refuse to knuckle down under a fascist dictatorship in a near-future America in Richard C. Sarafian's dystopian teleplay, Shadow on the Land (both 1968). With a young family to support, keeping busy was a priority and Hackman went from reuniting with Jim Brown as prison uprising leader 'Red' Fraker in Buzz Kulik's Riot to floating round in space (as 'Buzz' Lloyd) with Richard Crenna and James Franciscus in John Sturges's Marooned before he put Robert Redford through his paces as skiing coach Eugene Claire in Michael Ritchie's Downhill Racer and took to the skies as hard-living skydiver Joe Browdy alongside Burt Lancaster in John Frankenheimer's The Gypsy Moths (all 1969).

One can only imagine which direction Hackman's career might have taken if he had not heeded the advice of his agent and turned down the role of Mike Brady in a new sitcom entitled, The Brady Bunch (1969-1974). Robert Reed took the role and Hackman moved on to Gilbert Cates's I Never Sang For My Father (1970), in which widowed college professor Gene Garrison feels guilty about leaving his ageing father (Melvyn Douglas) behind when he embarks upon a new life in California. Hackman drew another Best Supporting nomination for his performance, but failed again to build on his upswing, as he settled for a couple of mediocre assignments, as psychiatrist Dave Randolph discovering his wife (Rachel Roberts) has had a lesbian affair in George Schaeffer's Doctors' Wives and as sadistic cattle baron, Brandt Ruger, seeking revenge on bandit Oliver Reed in Don Medford's The Hunting Party (both 1971). However, the year would end on a more positive note, thanks to Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Jackie Gleason, Peter Boyle, Jimmy Breslin, Robert Mitchum, James Caan, Charles Bronson, and Lee Marvin all turning down the role of Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle.

Rod Taylor probably wanted the part more than Hackman. But director William Friedkin felt he cut an edgier figure as the NYPD narcotics cop teaming with partner, Buddy 'Cloudy' Russo (Roy Scheider), to entrap cocaine smuggler, Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) in The French Connection (1971). The actor spent several weeks shadowing NYPD hero Eddie Egan around Harlem to prepare for a role that also required him to do a little stunt driving during the epic car chase that helped earn Gerald B. Greenberg the Oscar for Best Editing. Hackman, Friedkin, and adapting screenwriter Ernest Tidyman also won, as the evening was topped off with a Best Picture triumph.

Suddenly, Hackman was a star, although he didn't enjoy the recognition that came with the fame.' People on the street still call me Popeye,' he grumbled years after he had reprised the role in John Frankenheimer's The French Connection II (1975). 'I wish I could have another hit and a new nickname.' In later years, however, he came to reflect on the experience with more fondness. 'Film-making has always been risky,' he mused, 'both physically and emotionally - but I do choose to consider that film a moment in a checkered career of hits and misses,'

Once again, eager to cash in on his success, Hackman signed up for 10 pictures over the next three years. He gave mob enforcer Lee Marvin a run for his money as crooked slaughterhouse boss 'Mary Ann' in Michael Ritchie's Prime Cut and gave marijuana-dealing musician Kris Kristofferson a tough time as corrupt detective Leo Holland in Bill L. Norton's Cisco Pike. He was reluctant to take the role of the Reverend Frank Scott in Ronald Neame's The Poseidon Adventure (all 1972), as he felt the premise was foolish. He later recalled being contacted about a potential sequel. 'They called me and I said, "Well, yeah, but I got killed in the last five minutes of the film." "Well, we'll get around it." I said, "I don't think so."' One wonders how he would have reacted to being referenced in 'Speed 3', the Father Ted (1995-98) episode in which Ted Crilley (Dermot Morgan) watches the film hoping to find a way to rescue Fr Dougal (Ardal O'Hanlon) from a sabotaged milk float.

For all Hackman's disdain, this remains one of his most-loved films. Moreover, it brought him a second consecutive BAFTA after having won for The French Connection. Seeking something more credible, Hackman joined forces with Al Pacino to play drifters Max Millan and Lion Delbuchi trekking from California to Pittsburgh to start a car washing business in Jerry Schatzberg's Scarecrow (1973). The gambit paid off, as this compelling character picaresque won the Palme d'or at Cannes and remained Hackman's favourite picture. 'It's the only film I've ever made in absolute continuity,' he recalled later, 'and that allowed me to take all kinds of chances and really build my character.'

He also enjoyed working with Pacino, as they tried to stay in character throughout the shoot. As Hackman told chat show host David Letterman, they had been slumming it on the streets of San Francisco and had asked a homeless man for directions to the nearest soup kitchen. When they thanked him, he replied, 'You're welcome, Mr Hackman and Mr Pacino.'

An even more iconic role followed in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974), which also took the Palme d'or. Hackman excelled as surveillance operator Harry Caul, who becomes increasingly unhinged after overhearing a plan to commit murder. Furious at discovering that he had been second choice to Marlon Brando, he channelled his insecurity and resentment into a performance he ranked as his best. 'That was the pinnacle of my acting career in terms of character development,' Hackman told one interviewer. 'Caul was somewhat constipated. The character didn't burst out. There was no satisfying cathartic moment in the film.'

As the picture made little impact on the box office, it was overshadowed by The Godfather Part II (1974). But its reputation grew after the Watergate scandal and it joined a series of paranoid thrillers that included Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View (1974) and Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor (1975). By contrast, parody was the name of the game in Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein, in which Hackman revelled in his comic cameo as Harold the blind man. He and Liv Ullmann also contributed committed performances as a cattle rancher and his mail-order spouse in Jan Troell's underrated, Zandy's Bride (both 1974). Regrettably, this is one of the few Hackman titles from this period that is currently out of Cinema Paradiso's reach. But we can bring you Night Moves (1975), which sees ex-footballer-turned-shamus Harry Moseby stumble into a dangerous corner while searching for the missing daughter of a washed-up actress. Director Arthur Penn was delighted to reunite with Hackman and noted, 'American movies have always had certain kinds of self-styled actors who shouldn't be stars but are and Gene is in the company of Bogart, Tracy, and Cagney.' High praise, indeed.

A Sticky Patch

As the blockbuster began to change Hollywood's approach to film-making and audience-profiling, a number of old school directors from the studio era continued to make grown-up pictures about weighty historical and contemporary topics, Such projects suited Hackman, who was so certain that he too old to become one of the new breed of action heroes that he turned down Jaws (1975) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), as well as such landmarks as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Network (1976), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). He was also too disinterested in froth to settle for romcoms and melodramas. While the majority of these films were well made, they couldn't compete with the likes Star Wars (1977) and, as a consequence, they have rather gone under the radar of film historians.

Cinema Paradiso users can catch up with many of them and discover the range of role that Hackman took during what was a sticky patch for American mainstream movies. He was suitably pugnacious as Sam Clayton, one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders in Richard Brooks's Bite the Bullet, and exhibited menacing charm as rum runner Kibby Womack alongside Liza Minnelli and Burt Reynolds in Stanley Donen's Lucky Lady (both 1975). But the latter did more for his bank balance than his career, as he pocketed $1.2 million for a Prohibition flop.

We reckon both films are well worth a look, but there was some truth to the rumour that Hackman took roles in this period to support an extravagant lifestyle that included homes in the US and Europe and his own plane. Yet, Hackman had nothing to do with the Hollywood social scene, as his brusquely business-like approach to shooting meant that he made few friends. Indeed, he gained something of a reputation for impatience and intolerance on the set, as he could never understand why people didn't just do their jobs so that everyone could do their best work quickly and effectively and then go home.

In the mid-1970s, he took a couple of years off to beat battles with booze and depression. Throwing himself into work on his return, he essayed Roy Tucker, a jailbird on a murder rap who accepts a dangerous mission in return for a new life in Stanley Kramer's The Domino Principle. However, he didn't enjoy being part of the ensemble as Polish general St anis³aw Sosabowski in Richard Attenborough's Arnhem recreation, A Bridge Too Far, which he felt was a chaotic muddle. But Hackman remained in uniform as Major William Sherman Foster, an officer in the French Foreign Legion detailed to protect some archaeologists on a dig in Morocco in Dick Richards's March or Die (all 1977).

Dipping his toe into the blockbuster revolution, Hackman stole the show as villain Lex Luthor in Richard Donner's Superman (1978) and took time while pre-filmed footage was slotted into Richard Lester's Superman 2 (1980). Having let Richard Pryor camp it up with Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder in Lester's Superman III (1983), Hackman returned as Luthor in Sidney J. Furie's Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987), in which he also voiced Nuclear Man. Staying on the lighter side, Hackman took his first tilt at romantic comedy, as demoted office drone George Dupler falls for aspiring songwriter, Cheryl Gibbons (Barbra Streisand), who is married to a firefighter with a short fuse in Jean-Claude Tramont's All Night Long. This turned out to be a disappointment, despite a certain spark between the stars. But Warren Beatty's Reds (both 1981) took the Academy Award for Best Picture, as Hackman cameo'd as Pete Van Wherry after his old friend had coaxed him out of a lengthy sabbatical, during which time Hackman had devoted himself to painting, sculpting, travelling, fishing, and trying to save a marriage that would ultimately end in divorce in 1986. He also suffered great pain when best friend Norman Garey shot himself in 1982. However, a hefty tax bill soon had Hackman back at work and he later recalled, 'I was just barely hanging in, taking pretty much anything that was offered to me and trying to make it work.'

Having voiced God in John Herzfeld's Two of a Kind, Hackman teamed with Nick Nolte to play a pair of grizzled reporters covering the Samoza regime in Nicaragua in Roger Spottiswoode's political thriller, Under Fire. He proved even doughtier as retired Marine Colonel Jason Rhodes assembling a motley crew to search for his missing son in Laos in Ted Kotcheff's Uncommon Valor. Also in 1983, he gave one of his finest performances as Jack McCann, the 1920s Klondike prospector who believes his daughter and her husband (Theresa Russell and Rutger Hauer) are trying to drive him from his private Caribbean island in Nicolas Roeg's Eureka.

Following a quiet 1984, in which he played Ned Rawley, a ship owner struggling to guide his young sons through the death of their mother in Jerry Schatzberg's Misunderstood (1984), Hackman portrayed married steelworker Harry Mackenzie drifting into an affair with Ann-Margret in Bud Yorkin's Twice in a Lifetime (1985), Colin Welland's adaptation of his own Play For Today entry, which boasted a closing credits song by Paul McCartney.

Also in 1985, Hackman reunited with Arthur Penn on Target, a twisting thriller in which buried secrets make it difficult for Chris Lloyd (Matt Dillon) to trust father Walter (Hackman) after his mother (Gayle Hunnicutt) is kidnapped. He also got to work with Sidney Lumet on Power (1986), in which Wilfred Buckley acts as a conscience for former partner, Pete St John (Richard Gere), as he comes to regret the business methods that made him rich. It's a shame this isn't on disc, as Julie Christie is as good as Gere and Hackman. However, he would score a bigger hit as Norman Dale, the 1950s basketball coach who sets the Hickory Huskers on a winning streak in David Anspaugh's Best Shot (aka Hoosiers), which earned Dennis Hopper an Oscar nomination as Hackman's drunken sidekick.

John Farrow's The Big Clock (1948) provided the inspiration for Roger Donaldson's No Way Out (1987), in which naval commander Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner) discovers he is having a fling with Susan Atwell (Sean Young), who is also the mistress of his boss, Secretary of Defence, David Brice (Hackman). From the hissable to the heroic, Hackman survived being behind North Vietnamese lines as Lieutenant Colonel Iceal E. Hambleton in Peter Markle's Bat*21. He then haunted a New York boxing gym as coach Danny McGuinn helping Olympic hopeful son Eddie (Craig Sheffer) wreak revenge on the gang-connected fighter involved in the death of his brother (Jeff Fahey) in David Drury's Split Decisions. Neither was a particular success. Nor was Peter Masterson's Full Moon in Blue Water, in which a bar owner on an island in the Gulf of Mexico falls for school bus driver, Teri Garr. However, Hackman's other two films from 1988 were to rank among his best.

A Jobbing Star

Hackman only has a small role in Woody Allen's Another Woman. But the chemistry between Larry Lewis and New York philosophy professor Marion Post (Gena Rowlands) is readily apparent and makes her more convinced that she has married the wrong man in second husband, Ken (Ian Holm). At the opposite end of 1988, Hackman was very much front and centre in Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning, as FBI agents Rupert Anderson and Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe) are sent to Jessup County in 1964 to investigate the disappearance of three Civil Rights activists.

Laying bare American prejudice, this potent and enduringly relevant thriller earned Hackman another Oscar nomination for Best Actor, as well as the praise of his British director: 'Gene is someone who is a very intuitive and instinctive actor...The brilliance of Gene Hackman is that he can look at a scene and he can cut through to what is necessary, and he does it with extraordinary economy - he's the quintessential movie actor. He's never showy ever, but he's always right on.' On the big night, Hackman was beaten by that other 'least likely to succeed' loser from Pasadena, Dustin Hoffman for Barry Levinson's Rain Man. What must their cocksure classmates have been thinking?

In compensation, Hackman was presented with the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. He might well have picked up another couple of Oscars, as he acquired the rights to Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs, with a view to writing a screenplay to direct himself as Hannibal Lecter. 'I really wasn't very inventive about the process,' he later confessed. 'I was more concerned about the description of the scene process, and it just got to be overlong.' Hackman must have felt a pang when Jonathan Demme, Ted Tally, and Anthony Hopkins collected their statuetters. But he had the grace to joke,'At least I had a good eye for the material.'

A subsequent attempt to adapt Jennifer Niven's Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic also ended in frustration. 'It was the true story of an Inuit woman who had gone on an expedition in the Arctic, and everybody on the expedition had died,' he told an interviewer. 'She was on her own for six months up there - it was kind of a fascinating story in some ways, but I couldn't quite lick it. I couldn't quite get it to come alive. I didn't have any confidence in it.'

For now, Hackman stuck to the day job, as Sergeant Johnny Gallagher attempted to discover who had sabotaged some high-level anti-nuclear talks and why in Andrew Davis's Cold War thriller, The Package (1989). However, a comic investigation dominates Bob Clark's Loose Cannons (1990), as mismatched Washington cops Mac Stern (Hackman) and Ellis Fielding (Dan Aykroyd) try to find a sex tape involving Adolf Hitler that could ruin the career of the West German chancellor (Robert Prosky).

Having waited 23 years, Hackman finally got to work with Mike Nichols, when he took the guest role of film director Lowell Kolchek opposite Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep as a mother and daughter loosely based on Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher in Postcards From the Edge. Changing tack again after having had heart surgery, the 60 year-old Hackman bristled as ex-Marine-turned-deputy district attorney Robert Caulfield seeking to protect murder witness, Carol Hunnicutt (Anne Archer), in Peter Hyams's Narrow Margin (both 1990). In Richard Fleischer's The Narrow Margin (1952), the roles had been taken by Charles MacGraw and Marie Windsor.

One wonders when he signed up for Class Action whether Hackman knew that director Michael Apted had called the shots on 'Kisses At Fifty', the Play For Today that Colin Welland had reworked as Twice in a Lifetime. The story centres on lawyer Jedediah Tucker Ward's discovery that his opponent in a case of automotive culpability is his estranged daughter, Maggie (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). They spark plausibly enough, as do reactivated CIA agent Sam Boyd and KGB mole Pyotr Ivanovich Grushenko (Mikhail Baryshnikov), as they travel to a prisoner exchange in a recently liberated Berlin in Nicholas Meyer's action thriller, Company Business (both 1991). But these entertaining outings were completely overshadowed by what came next.

Top of His Game

Hackman had not wanted to play 'Little Bill' Daggett in Unforgiven (1992) because he found the violence in David Webb Peoples's screenplay to be distasteful. However, director Clint Eastwood urged him to read the text again because he believed it made an important statement against violence and Hackman signed up to play the sadistic sheriff of Big Whiskey in 1880s Wyoming. In addition to dealing with Will Munny (Eastwood) and The Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett), as they seek the cowboy who had slashed the face of prostitute Delilah Fitzgerald (Anna Thomson), Little Bill also seeks to tame gunfighter English Bob (Richard Harris), who has come to town with his biographer, W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek).

At one point, Daggett lashes out at English Bob in a frenzied attack and Hackman admitted that he had found motivation for the scene in a perceived snub by Harris over their past acquaintance on Hawaii. 'I could tell he didn't remember having worked with me,' Hackman told the New York Times, 'and he tried to fake his way through it. I remember thinking, "Oh, I can use this." I just took that disappointment and did this kind of transference.' Such moments of twisted inspiration helped Hackman win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and restored him to the pinnacle of his profession.

Such was Hackman's tendency to become bellicose that he was known as 'Vesuvius' among Hollywood directors. Dustin Hoffman remembers him periodically wandering into bars looking for a fight, while former roommate Robert Duvall called him 'a tormented guy, always into his own space, his own thing'. Even as late as 2001, Hackman was getting into scraps. He told the Los Angeles Times about a punch-up following a minor traffic incident in West Hollywood. 'He brushed against me and I popped him,' he confessed. 'Then the other guy jumped on me. We had this ugly wrestling match on the ground. The police came...I got a couple of good shots in. The guy had me around the neck. That's the ugly part. When you're down on the ground and you're nearly 72 years old.'

Director Wes Anderson avowed, 'There's something very charismatic in him, even when he's being his worst.' But Hackman had no qualms about being temperamental on the set if it helped his performance. When asked to describe his technique, he replied: 'I do the same thing now was when I was just starting, I ask myself a few questions: How is this character like me? How is he unlike me? In the difference between these two, what is important? What choices can I make which will further the author's intent? I ask myself where, when, why - real simple questions. I do an atmospheric kind of thing by dealing with objects such as where I've been when I come into a room, where I'm going when I leave it. Before every scene, I still do the same relaxation exercises George Morrison taught me 20-odd years ago. First-year acting tasks. Those work for me.'

'Of course, you can't do just that,' he continued. 'You have to make good choices and do a lot of technical things, too. It took 10 years for me to fill up as a person, but once I became mature all of that kicked in in a simple, direct way,' But, even though he felt he had become less fractious on set, Hackman still admitted, 'I pity directors who work with me. I do try very hard to get along, however.'

Following his exertions in Unforgiven, Hackman decided it was time to return to the stage. He co-starred on Broadway with Glenn Close and Richard Dreyfus in Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden, which would be filmed two years later by Roman Polanski, with Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, and Stuart Wilson. But this would be his last theatrical booking, as the call of the West brought him back before the cameras to play Brigadier General George Crook in Walter Hill's Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Nicholas Porter Earp in Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp (1994), and John Herod in Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead (1995).

Having teamed with Tom Cruise to play shifty Memphis lawyer Avery Tolar in Sydney Pollack's The Firm (1993), Hackman also got a taste for John Grisham legal thrillers. He next played Ku Klux Klansman Sam Cayhall awaiting the end of his 29-year stint on Death Row in James Foley's The Chamber (1996) before reuniting with Dustin Hoffman for jury consultant Rankin Fitch's showdown with New Orleans lawyer Wendell Rohr in Gary Fleder's Runaway Jury (2003).

While learning to scuba dive for The Firm, Hackman discovered a new passion and he found himself submerged again, as Captain Frank Ramsey and Lieutenant Commander Ron Hunter (Denzel Washington) fall out over the interpretation of an order aboard the nuclear submarine, USS Alabama, in Tony Scott's Crimson Tide. Power also goes to the head of sleazy Hollywood director Harry Zimm, who turns loan shark Chili Palmer (John Travolta) into his right-hand man in Barry Sonnenfeld's take on the Elmore Leonard bestseller, Get Shorty (both 1995).

Staying in a comic frame of mind, Hackman stole the show as conservative senator, Kevin Keeley, in The Birdcage, Mike Nichols's remake of Edouard Molinaro's La Cage aux folles (1978), with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane stepping into the roles created by Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault. Switching from female attire to a white coat, Hackman reunited with Michael Apted for Extreme Measures (both 1996), a medical ethics saga in which New York doctor, Guy Luthan (Hugh Grant) comes to suspect that senior colleague, Lawrence Myrick, is up to no good in his search for a cure for paralysis. As the conflicted villain, Hackman made it all look so easy. But, even though he remained in demand in his mid-70s, he was already in the final decade of his career.

One of a Kind

Five years after their Oscar-winning partnership, Hackman and Clint Eastwood rejoined forces for Absolute Power (1997), which was less vaunted despite boasting a screenplay by William Goldman. Nevertheless, Hackman was on seething form as President Alan Richmond, whose adulterous assignation with a billionaire's wife is witnessed by jewel thief, Luther Whitney (Eastwood). He proved just as slippery in Robert Benton's Twilight (1998), as cancer-stricken former movie star Jack Ames implicates private eye Harry Ross (Paul Newman) in a case involving the first husband of Ames's actress wife, Catherine (Susan Sarandon).

Having contributed the voice of General Mandible to Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson's CGI animation, Antz (which he also narrated), Hackman revisited his past in taking the role of Edward 'Brill' Lyle, a surveillance expert who helps lawyer Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith) nab some corrupt NSA agents in Tony Scott's Enemy of the State (both 1998). As the millennium turned, he also broke new ground by acting as executive producer on Stephen Hopkins's Under Suspicion (2000), in which Puerto Rican cop, Victor Benezet (Morgan Freeman), is disquieted by way tax attorney Harry Hearst (Hackman) keeps changing his account of coming across the lifeless body of a young rape victim. It wasn't the most demanding material, but the Mystery Writers of America nominated it for the Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture.

Taking a break from villainy, Hackman appeared as football coach Jimmy McGinty in Howard Deutch's The Replacements (2000), which sees the Washington Sentinels have to rely on ringers to complete the season during a strike by their star players. Keanu Reeves co-starred as rookie quarterback, Shane Falco, and Hackman hooked up with another new star, Owen Wilson, in John Moore's Behind Enemy Lines (2001), which chronicles the efforts of Adriatic Battle Unit commander, Rear Admiral Leslie McMahon Reigart, to launch a rescue mission for Naval Flight Officer Lieutenant Chris Burnett, who has been shot down by Bosnian Serb paramilitaries.

Following an amusing cameo as imprisoned mob boss Harold Margolese in Gore Verbinsk's The Mexican, Hackman played a more fiendish criminal mastermind in David Mamet's Heist, as Joe Moore is forced into taking on one last job after fence Mickey Bergman (Danny DeVito) withholds the proceeds from the robbery that had prompted Moore to retire because his face had been caught on CCTV. On a lighter note, Hackman set himself up as tobacco tycoon William B. Tensy to be the target for the mother-daughter con team of Max (Sigourney Weaver) and Page Connors (Jennifer Love Hewitt) in David Mirkin's Heartbreakers (all 2001).

But one title stood out from all others in 2001, although Hackman nearly didn't do it to teach its director a lesson. On learning that Wes Anderson was writing a character for him, the actor supposedly informed him, 'I don't like it when people write for me, because you don't know me, and I don't want what you think is me.' However, he was so taken by the lead in The Royal Tenenbaums that he cheerfully joined Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Luke Wilson in the ensemble gem that also found room for Bill Murray and Danny Glover.

During the shoot, Hackman made Anderson's life hell and his fellow cast members were dismayed by his behaviour. When they confronted him as a 10th anniversary reunion at the New York Film Festival, Hackman had insisted that he had been anti-social to remain true to his disreputable character. 'There was great love on the set,' Hackman explained. 'Yet at the same time I was very conflicted, because people were much younger than me and I felt left out or ignored. And that wasn't even true. I knew it wasn't true, but I used it anyway.' Whatever the facts, the ruse paid off, as Hackman won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. In 2003, he was back at the same ceremony to receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award from Michael Caine and Robin Williams for his 'outstanding contribution to the entertainment field'.

Writing around this time, critic David Edelstein shrewdly pointed out that 'Mr Hackman's performances have volcanic undercurrents. It might be that the secret of his uniqueness is that his comfort zone is such a scary and volatile place.' However, Hackman was tiring of occupying 'a middle ground between character acting and movie stardom' and he decided to call it a day after playing Monroe Cole, the former POTUS who runs for mayor in a small Maine town against local handyman Harold Harrison (Ray Romano) in Donald Petrie's Welcome to Mooseport (2004).

On 7 July 2004, Hackman told Larry King that he believed his acting career was over because he had no projects in the pipeline and wasn't seeking any. Five years later, in a rare interview, he revealed, 'The straw that broke the camel's back was actually a stress test that I took in New York. The doctor advised me that my heart wasn't in the kind of shape that I should be putting it under any stress.' Reflecting on his career, he said, 'When I'm actually on the set or on a stage, actually doing the work, I loved that process and I loved the creative process of trying to bring a character to life. And then, when you're actually shooting or performing, there is a kind of a feeling that comes over you, a confidence and kind of a wonderful, washed-over feeling of well-being, if you will. When it's going well!' But he was less enamoured of the drawbacks of screen acting.

'The business part of show business is kinda wicked,' he explained. 'You jump from trying to be a sponge, if you will, in terms of input from other actors and the director and everything that's surrounding you, you jump from that to a luncheon meeting with an agent and a producer on another film, or something that's gone on on the film that you're doing. It's kind of a frying pan. It was jarring and at my age and with my health, I decided I didn't want to do that any longer.'

He still cropped up in the occasional documentary, including Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows (2000), The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002), The Silence of the Lambs: The Inside Story (2010), Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014), and 78/52 (2017). Hackman also narrated four episodes of the sports series, America's Game: The Super Bowl Champions (2007), as well as the Marine Corps documentaries, The Unknown Flag Raiser of Iwo Jima (2016) and We, the Marines (2017). But he had no regrets about walking away. He jokingly told GQ in 2008 that he might consider a comeback, 'If I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything and just one or two people.'

Now living in New Mexico with second wife, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa (whom he had married in 1991), Hackman was amused when a member of a film crew shooting in the city failed to recognise him. 'There was a young assistant director on a backstreet in Santa Fe, directing traffic,' he recalled, 'I pulled up next to her and asked her if they were hiring any extras. She said, "No, I'm very sorry, sir."' Given that he had once claimed, ''I'm a private person...I like to be as average on the street as I can, and not picked out,' he must have been delighted.

In his heyday, Hackman had sought excitement away from the screen by flying his own plane and racing cars. Having competed in Sports Car Club of America races in the late 1970s, he won the Long Beach Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race in 1980. Three years later, he also drove in the 24 Hours of Daytona Endurance Race. But he also enjoyed cerebral pursuits, designing 10 houses, two of which were featured in Architectural Digest. Moreover, he also co-authored three historical novels with undersea archaeologist Daniel Lenihan - Wake of the Perdido Star (1999); Justice For None (2004), and Escape From Andersonville (2008). Going solo, he also published Payback At Morning Peak (2011) and Pursuit (2013).

In later life, Hackman regretted that he had been an indifferent father to son Christopher and daughters Elizabeth and Leslie. But he seemed content in a second marriage that enabled him to stay out of the limelight. He was forced back into the headlines when he and Betsy were found at their home on 26 February 2025 and reports suggested that they had been dead for so long that a natural process of mummification had commenced. It would appear that Hackman had suffered a fall in the mudroom around 17 February, but the investigation remains open.

Gene Hackman didn't value fame highly. He didn't even know where his Oscars were, when he was asked about them in 2001. 'Maybe they're packed somewhere,' he shrugged. He hoped he would be remembered as 'a decent actor - as someone who tried to portray what was given to them in an honest fashion'. As he told GQ, 'You go through stages in your career that you feel very good about yourself. Then you feel awful, like, "Why didn't I choose something else?" But overall I'm pretty satisfied that I made the right choice when I decided to be an actor. I was lucky to find a few things that I could do well.'