Gene Hackman, Intense, ‘Uncommon’ Everyman Actor

Gene Hackman, 95, was once deemed to be unfavorable in the industry but later resurrected as an all-star actor who exploited personal pain to deliver intense, edgy performances.

In the 1971 crime thriller “The French Connection,” Hackman is perhaps best known for his portrayal of the tough and obnoxious New York cop Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle.

The five-and-a-half-minute car chase scene features Doyle pursuing a bad guy who has commandeered an elevated train, grunting, grimacing, and honking as he grunts through the city streets.

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For that movie, Hackman won his first award for best actor. In the 1992 western “Unforgiven,” Little Bill” Daggett’s portrayal of the brutal small-town sheriff “Little Bill” Daggett won another golden statuette 20 years later for best supporting actor.

In addition to his five decades of acting in over 80 different movies, he received three more Oscar nominations.

“He’s incapable of bad work”, Alan Parker, who directed Hackman in the 1988 civil rights drama “Mississippi Burning”, told Film Comment magazine that year.

“Every director has a short list of actors he’d die to work with, and I’ll bet Gene’s on every one”.

Midwestern roots

Hackman was a native Midwesterner, born during the Great Depression in Illinois.

His father left when he was 13 and he was a broken member of a troubled family, who waving irrationally as he drove away one day. Hackman claimed he was aware at the time that he was certain that the man would never return.

Before he had established himself as an actor, Hackman’s mother passed away in a fire.

He also spent a bad year in the US Marines, which he joined when he was 16 when he made up his age.

He infused his characters with his own agony.

In 2002, Hackman told The Guardian, “Dysfunctional families have sown a number of pretty good actors.”

Arthur Penn, who directed Hackman in “Night Moves” (1975) and “Target” (1985), called him an “extraordinarily truthful actor”.

He “has the ability to tap into hidden emotions that many of us cover up or conceal,” according to Penn.

‘ An actor, not a star ‘

Hackman was a unlikely performer; he started acting after working a number of jobs and only attracted interest in his 30s.

Hollywood legend claims that Dustin Hoffman and he were the “least likely to succeed” after enrolling him at the Pasadena Playhouse in California in the late 1950s.

When all three of their actors were struggling actors, they would later play a game of poker with Robert Duvall in New York.

Not blessed with leading man good looks, Hackman instead drew on his talents and versatility, taking on gritty roles and delivering thoughtful, intelligent performances.

“I wanted to act, but I’d always been convinced that actors had to be handsome. That was my idol Errol Flynn when I was younger. Because I didn’t look like Flynn when I looked in the mirror after leaving a theater, I would be shocked. I felt like him”, Hackman once said.

After studying journalism at the University of Illinois, he first tried television production, before going to acting school in Pasadena.

Upon graduation, Hackman moved back to New York, where he worked off-Broadway and began to turn heads.

In 1964, he was cast on Broadway in the play “Any Wednesday”, which led to a small role in the film “Lilith” starring Warren Beatty.

A few years later, Beatty was casting for “Bonnie and Clyde” and chose Hackman as Clyde’s brother Buck Barrow.

In a moving movie from 1967, Hackman received his first Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, putting him on a course to becoming a star.

A second Academy Award nomination came for “I Never Sang For My Father” (1970), in which he played a professor who feels he has never won his father’s approval.

“I was trained to be an actor, not a star. I was prepared to play the roles, and not to deal with media, lawyers, agents, or the press,” said Hackman.

Hackman, who lived with his second wife in Santa Fe and wrote and painted well into his 60s and 70s, accumulated numerous film credits throughout his career. His wife’s home was where he and his wife were discovered.

Into the 21st century, he starred in “The Heist” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” in 2001, the latter winning him his third competitive Golden Globe, before announcing his retirement in 2008.

According to Hackman, “watching myself on screen really costs me a lot emotionally.”

“I think of myself and feel quite young, and then I look at this elderly man with the sagging chins, tired eyes, receding hairline, and all that.”

Source: Channels TV