Moviegoers lost Gene Hackman more than 20 years ago when he permanently and unequivocally stepped back from acting. But he left behind a lifetime of
Moviegoers lost Gene Hackman more than 20 years ago when he permanently and unequivocally stepped back from acting. But he left behind a lifetime of work that never faded away. The esteemed actor and five-time Oscar nominee always had a workingman quality about him, and like most working men, one day he simply retired. In his mid-70s, Hackman stopped taking up-to-date roles and vanished from sight, leaving behind six decades of memorable performances.
His death at 95, reported on Thursday, was not a surprise itself, given his age, but the circumstances were startling and untimely just the same. His body was found in his Santa Fe home along with that of his wife of 34 years, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, who was 65, along with one of their pet dogs. Local police said the couple had been dead for “quite a while” and considered the deaths “suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough investigation.”
Fans of the actor began to immediately highlight Hackman’s lifetime of delivering fiery, emotional, and vulnerable performances, sharing images of his work from movies that have become classics. The highlights are arduous to miss. There are the two roles that won him Academy Awards—the corrupt sheriff Little Bill Dagget in Clint Eastwood’s unsurpassable 1992 Western Unforgiven, and the hard-bitten New York narcotics cop, Popeye Doyle, in William Friedkin’s 1974 neo-noir masterpiece, The French Connection.
Perhaps what was Hackman’s greatest performance—playing the haunted surveillance agent Harry Caul in Francis Ford Coppola’s anxiety-inducing thriller The Conversation—was not recognized by the Academy, even though the movie itself was nominated for best picture. Art Carney won lead actor that year for the old-timer-with-a-cat heartwarmer Harry and Tonto, beating out (deep breath) Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, Al Pacino in The Godfather: Part II, Dustin Hoffman in Lenny, and Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express. Few can reach the end of The Conversation and not be shattered by Hackman’s work, so it’s not just surprising but also appalling that there wasn’t room for him among those nominees. (Due respect to the delayed Carnery and Finney, but come on.) Hackman’s exclusion is proof that the Oscars sometimes make large mistakes.
Hackman was a crossover artist who could do virtually everything. He was blisteringly entertaining in comedies like 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums and 1996’s The Birdcage; he was terrifying and cold-blooded in thrillers like 1993’s The Firm and the 1995’s Crimson Tide; and he could steal scenes with the best of them in popcorn blockbusters like the 1972 disaster flick The Poseidon Adventure, playing a self-sacrificing priest, and as a dastardly Lex Luthor in the Christopher Reeve Superman films.
Even when he was in a subpar project, Hackman was reliably compelling. Film critic Roger Ebert lambasted the 1983 Vietnam rescue thriller Uncommon Valor but noted that its star, Hackman, “combines heart with threat as well as any actor in the movies.”
Here’s a look back at just some of Hackman’s indelible performances beyond the obvious front-runners.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Hackman had made a number of miniature movies and TV appearances in the years before Bonnie and Clyde, but this Depression-era crime saga from filmmaker Arthur Penn stands as his breakthrough. Hackman earned a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his performance as Buck Barrow, the doomed brother of Warren Beatty’s charismatic outlaw.
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