Gene Hackman: the prolific actor who brought intensity to diverse roles

Gene Hackman wasn’t easily pigeonholed. A former Marine with a face he likened to that of “your everyday mine worker,” he drew accolades for his portrayals of tough characters with a menacing edge. These included the racist, bullying detective Popeye Doyle in The French Connection (1971) and the sadistic small-town sheriff in Unforgiven (1992). But over more than 80 movie roles he delved into a wide range of personalities. In The Conversation (1974) he was a painfully shy surveillance expert, and in Hoosiers (1986) a scrappy coach who inspires a team of underdogs. He showed comic flair as a sleazy Hollywood producer in Get Shorty (1995) and an eccentric patriarch in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). Ever present was Hackman’s intensity and embrace of complexity; he could render the humanity in a hateful character or evoke a hero’s flaws. Whether a character “was sympathetic or not, that’s not important to me,” he said. “I want to make you believe this could be a human being.”

Eugene Allen Hackman grew up in a fractious household in Danville, Ill., said the Associated Press. His parents “fought repeatedly,” and his father, a newspaper pressman, frequently beat him. He “found refuge in movie houses,” taking screen rebels Errol Flynn and James Cagney “as his role models.” When he was 13, his father left—simply waving as he drove off; three years later, Hackman lied about his age to join the Marines. On tours in China and Japan “his brawling and resistance to authority” led to three demotions, though working as a DJ on Armed Forces Radio whetted “his taste for show business.” After his discharge, he moved to New York and got married, said The Guardian. With his wife’s encouragement, “he decided to try acting,” studying at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. Returning to New York, he hustled for stage and TV roles, supporting himself with work as a doorman and truck driver. His big chance came after he landed a small part in the 1964 movie Lilith and impressed the star, Warren Beatty. When Beatty produced the 1967 classic Bonnie and Clyde, he cast Hackman as Clyde’s live-wire brother Buck. The film was a hit, and Hackman’s “assertive performance” earned him a nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Hackman drew a second supporting-actor nomination as a sensitive widower in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). But it was the combustible Popeye Doyle who’d prove his “breakout role,” said The New York Times. He was the sixth actor offered the part; struggling to connect with the violent character, he offered to drop out. Yet his riveting portrayal helped make the gritty film a smash, and he won the Oscar for Best Actor. Soon, Hackman was making movies “at such a pace that he became known as the hardest-working actor in Hollywood,” with roles including Lex Luthor in Superman (1978) and a hard-nosed Navy captain in Crimson Tide (1995). Plenty of his movies were duds, said The Washington Post. But with Hackman’s “restless, undirected energy,” he “made indelible impressions” even in subpar films. Known for a peremptory attitude on set, he was nicknamed “Vesuvius” for “his volcanic anger,” and he clashed with many of his directors. Nor did he socialize with them: He shunned the party circuit and “was quick to deflect any questions that demanded personal introspection.” He did embrace the wealth that came with movie stardom, though, blowing “a fortune on homes, private planes, and bad investments”—a major reason why he was constantly working.

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Later roles were heavy on “military men, villainous government officials, and lawyers,” said CNN.com. Then he “quietly retired” at 74, after the weak 2004 comedy Welcome to Mooseport, telling Larry King, “It’s probably all over.” He moved with his second wife to Santa Fe, where he painted, sculpted, and wrote, turning out historical novels, a Western, and a thriller. Often asked to return to film, he seemed content to let his body of work stand. “I was lucky to find a few things that I could do well as an actor,” he said in 2011, “and that I could look at and say, ‘Yeah, that’s all right.’”