Gene Hackman


Eugene Allen Hackman is a retired American actor and novelist. In a career that spanned more than six decades, Hackman won two Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, one Screen Actors Guild Award, and two BAFTAs.
Nominated for five Academy Awards, Hackman won Best Actor for his role as Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in the critically acclaimed thriller The French Connection, and Best Supporting Actor as "Little" Bill Daggett in the Clint Eastwood Western Unforgiven. His other nominations for Best Supporting Actor came with the films Bonnie and Clyde and I Never Sang for My Father, with a second Best Actor nomination for Mississippi Burning.
Hackman's other major film roles included The Poseidon Adventure, The Conversation, French Connection II, A Bridge Too Far, Superman: The Movie —as arch-villain Lex Luthor, Hoosiers, The Firm, The Quick and the Dead, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, Antz, The Replacements, Behind Enemy Lines, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Welcome to Mooseport —his final film role before retirement.

Early life and education

Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Eugene Ezra Hackman and Anna Lyda Elizabeth. He has one brother, Richard. He has Pennsylvania Dutch, English, and Scottish ancestry; his mother was Canadian, and was born in Lambton, Ontario. His family moved frequently, finally settling in Danville, Illinois, where they lived in the house of his English-born maternal grandmother, Beatrice. Hackman's father operated the printing press for the Commercial-News, a local paper. His parents divorced in 1943 and his father subsequently left the family. Hackman decided that he wanted to become an actor when he was ten years old.
Hackman lived briefly in Storm Lake, Iowa, and spent his sophomore year at Storm Lake High School. He left home at age 16 and lied about his age to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. He served four and a half years as a field radio operator. He was stationed in China. When the Communist Revolution conquered the mainland in 1949, Hackman was assigned to Hawaii and Japan. Following his discharge in 1951, he moved to New York and had several jobs. His mother died in 1962 as a result of a fire she accidentally started while smoking. He began a study of journalism and television production at the University of Illinois under the G.I. Bill, but left and moved to California.

Career

Beginnings to the 1960s

In 1956, Hackman began pursuing an acting career. He joined the Pasadena Playhouse in California, where he befriended another aspiring actor, Dustin Hoffman. Already seen as outsiders by their classmates, Hackman and Hoffman were voted "The Least Likely To Succeed", and Hackman got the lowest score the Pasadena Playhouse had yet given. Determined to prove them wrong, Hackman moved to New York City. A 2004 article in Vanity Fair described Hackman, Hoffman and Robert Duvall as struggling California-born actors and close friends, sharing NYC apartments in various two-person combinations in the 1960s. To support himself between acting jobs, Hackman was working as a uniformed doorman at a Howard Johnson restaurant when, as luck would have it, he encountered an instructor from the Pasadena Playhouse, who told him, "See, Hackman—I told you you wouldn't amount to anything." From then on, Hackman was determined to become the finest actor he possibly could.
Hackman got various bit roles, for example on the TV series Route 66 in 1963, and began performing in several Off-Broadway plays. In 1964 he had an offer to co-star in the play Any Wednesday with actress Sandy Dennis. This opened the door to film work. His first role was in Lilith, with Warren Beatty in the leading role. In 1967 he appeared in an episode of the television series The Invaders entitled The Spores. Another supporting role, Buck Barrow in 1967's Bonnie and Clyde, earned him an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor. In 1968 he appeared in an episode of I Spy, in the role of "Hunter", in the episode "Happy Birthday... Everybody". That same year he starred in the CBS Playhouse episode "My Father and My Mother" and the dystopian television film Shadow on the Land. In 1969 he played a ski coach in Downhill Racer and an astronaut in Marooned. Also that year, he played a member of a barnstorming skydiving team that entertained mostly at county fairs, a movie which also inspired many to pursue skydiving and has a cult-like status amongst skydivers as a result: The Gypsy Moths. He nearly accepted the role of Mike Brady for the TV series, The Brady Bunch, but his agent advised that he decline it in exchange for a more promising role, which he did.

1970s

Hackman was nominated for a second Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in I Never Sang for My Father. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as New York City Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection, marking his graduation to leading-man status.
He followed this with leading roles in the disaster film The Poseidon Adventure and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation, which was nominated for several Oscars. That same year, Hackman appeared, in what would become one of his most famous comedic roles, as The Blindman in Young Frankenstein.
He appeared as one of Teddy Roosevelt's former Rough Riders in the Western horse-race saga Bite the Bullet. He reprised his Oscar winning role as Doyle in the sequel French Connection II, and was part of an all-star cast in the war film A Bridge Too Far, playing Polish General Stanisław Sosabowski. Hackman showed a talent for both comedy and the "slow burn" as criminal mastermind Lex Luthor in Superman: The Movie, a role he would reprise in its 1980 and 1987 sequels.

1980s

Hackman alternated between leading and supporting roles during the 1980s, with prominent roles in Reds —directed by and starring Warren Beatty—Under Fire, Hoosiers , No Way Out and Mississippi Burning, where he was nominated for a second Best Actor Oscar. Between 1985 and 1988, he starred in nine films, making him the busiest actor, alongside Steve Guttenberg.

1990s

Hackman appeared with Anne Archer in Narrow Margin, a remake of the 1952 film The Narrow Margin. In 1992, he played the sadistic sheriff "Little" Bill Daggett in the Western Unforgiven directed by Clint Eastwood and written by David Webb Peoples. Hackman had pledged to avoid violent roles, but Eastwood convinced him to take the part, which earned him a second Oscar, this time for Best Supporting Actor. The film also won Best Picture.
In 1993, he appeared in as Brigadier General George Crook, and co-starred with Tom Cruise as a corrupt lawyer in The Firm, a legal thriller based on the John Grisham novel of the same name. Hackman would appear in a second film based on a John Grisham novel, playing a convict on death row in The Chamber.
Other notable films Hackman appeared in during the 1990s include Wyatt Earp , The Quick and the Dead opposite Sharon Stone, Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, and as submarine Captain Frank Ramsey alongside Denzel Washington in Crimson Tide. Hackman played movie director Harry Zimm with John Travolta in the comedy-drama Get Shorty. He reunited with Clint Eastwood in Absolute Power, and co-starred with Will Smith in Enemy of the State, his character reminiscent of the one he had portrayed in The Conversation.
In 1996, he took a comedic turn as conservative Senator Kevin Keeley in The Birdcage with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.

2000s

Hackman co-starred with Owen Wilson in Behind Enemy Lines, and appeared in the David Mamet crime thriller Heist, as an aging professional thief of considerable skill who is forced into one final job. He also gained much critical acclaim playing against type as the head of an eccentric family in Wes Anderson's comedy film The Royal Tenenbaums. He received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. In 2003, he also starred in another John Grisham legal drama, Runaway Jury at long last getting to make a picture with his long-time friend Dustin Hoffman. In 2004, Hackman appeared alongside Ray Romano in the comedy Welcome to Mooseport, his final film acting role to date.
Hackman was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Golden Globe Awards for his "outstanding contribution to the entertainment field" in 2003.

Retirement from acting

On July 7, 2004, Hackman gave a rare interview to Larry King, where he announced that he had no future film projects lined up and believed his acting career was over. In 2008, while promoting his third novel, he confirmed that he had retired from acting. When asked during a GQ interview in 2011 if he would ever come out of retirement to do one more film, he said he might consider it "if I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything and just one or two people." In 2016 he narrated the Smithsonian Channel documentary The Unknown Flag Raiser of Iwo Jima.

Career as a novelist

Together with undersea archaeologist Daniel Lenihan, Hackman has written three historical fiction novels: Wake of the Perdido Star, a sea adventure of the 19th century; Justice for None, a Depression-era tale of murder; and Escape from Andersonville about a prison escape during the American Civil War. His first solo effort, a story of love and revenge set in the Old West titled Payback at Morning Peak, was released in 2011. A police thriller, Pursuit, followed in 2013.
In 2011, he appeared on the Fox Sports Radio show The Loose Cannons, where he discussed his career and his novels with Pat O'Brien, Steve Hartman, and Vic "The Brick" Jacobs.

Personal life

Hackman's first marriage was to Faye Maltese. They had three children: Christopher Allen, Elizabeth Jean, and Leslie Anne Hackman. The couple divorced in 1986 after three decades of marriage. In 1991, he married Betsy Arakawa; they have a home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In the late 1970s, Hackman competed in Sports Car Club of America races, driving an open-wheeled Formula Ford. In 1983, he drove a Dan Gurney Team Toyota in the 24 Hours of Daytona Endurance Race. He also won the Long Beach Grand Prix Celebrity Race.
Hackman underwent an angioplasty in 1990.
He is an avid fan of the Jacksonville Jaguars and regularly attended Jaguars games as a guest of then head coach Jack Del Rio. Their friendship goes back to Del Rio's playing days at the University of Southern California.
In January 2012, the then 81-year-old Hackman was riding a bicycle in the Florida Keys when he was struck by a car.

Theatre credits

Film

Television

Accolades

Asteroid 55397 Hackman, discovered by Roy Tucker in 2001, was named in his honor. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on May 18, 2019.

Works or publications