To many, he will always be Superman supervillain Lex Luthor, but with a career spanning six decades, Gene Hackman’s acting CV was as varied as it was long.
A former Marine, his work on the screen began with an uncredited TV role in 1961.
He would go on to become a Hollywood star – despite his disdain for all things showbiz – playing villains, heroes and antiheroes in more than 80 movies spanning all genres, as well as small screen roles and performances on Broadway.
One of the busiest actors in town ahead of his retirement, his most memorable performances include New York City detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection and surveillance expert Harry Caul in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation.
Decorated with multiple Oscars, BAFTAs and Golden Globes across his career, he would step away from acting in 2004, pivoting to novel writing, a pursuit he said better suited his solitary nature.
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Born Eugene Allen Hackman in California in 1930, his parents divorced when he was 13, leaving him to be largely bought up by his British-born grandmother Beatrice Gray in Illinois.
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Leaving home at 16 to enlist in the Marine Corps, he served as a field radio operator and then as a broadcast journalist from 1947 to 1952, working in post-war China and Japan. During his service, his dislike for authority saw him demoted from corporal three times.
Hackman would go on to study journalism and television production at the University of Illinois but later decided to pursue an acting career.
Breakout role
Joining the Pasadena Playhouse in 1956, he would meet fellow jobbing actor Dustin Hoffman, with the pair sharing a flat before both found worldwide fame. He would also study with fellow future Hollywood star Robert Duvall.
After TV bit-parts and stage work, Hackman’s breakout role came in 1967 in Bonnie And Clyde, which saw him receive his first Oscar nomination.
His first Oscar win came in 1972 for his role as detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection, following it with a second 20 years later for his performance in Clint Eastwood’s Western Unforgiven.
Already well respected in the acting industry, he would earn household fame after he was cast as supervillain Lex Luthor in 1978, the ultimate nemesis to Christopher Reeve’s Superman.
It was a role he would reprise in the film’s subsequent sequels, 1980’s Superman II and 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.
An immense body of work
Part of so many movies now regarded as classics, other films he starred in over the decades include The Poseidon Adventure, A Bridge Too Far, Under Fire, Mississippi Burning, Crimson Tide, Get Shorty, The Royal Tenenbaums and Runaway Jury.
With his comedy chops as impressive as his dramatic skills, he also gave a memorable cameo as the blind man in Mel Brooks’ 1974 horror spoof Young Frankenstein.
While never considering himself a true star, Hackman acted opposite Hollywood heavyweights including Al Pacino, Gene Wilder, Oliver Reed, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and Diane Keaton.
Married Hackman had three children with his first wife Faye Maltese, to whom he was married for 30 years, until their divorce in 1986. He married classical pianist Betsy Arakawa in 1991.
Largely retiring from public life since the early 2000s, he had moved from buzzy LA to Santa Fey in New Mexico in 2004 and was rarely seen on the Hollywood social circuit.
‘I’ll get this icky feeling’
Hackman, a reluctant celebrity, made no secret of his disdain for the business side of show business and was self-effacing about his achievements.
He once told Time magazine if he ever caught his films on TV: “I’ll watch maybe five minutes of it, and I’ll get this icky feeling, and I turn the channel.”
Writing at his hilltop ranch overlooking the Colorado Rockies, Hackman published three historical novels, written alongside his friend and underwater archaeologist Daniel Lenihan.
Speaking about his passion for novel writing in his later years, Hackman told Reuters in 2008: “I like the loneliness of it… It’s similar in some ways to acting, but it’s more private and I feel like I have more control over what I’m trying to say and do.”
He added: “There’s always a compromise in acting and in film, you work with so many people and everyone has an opinion. … I don’t know that I like it better than acting, it’s just different. I find it relaxing and comforting.”
‘I’ve fulfilled a lot of my dreams’
Hackman’s final film role was in the 2004 political satire Welcome To Mooseport, opposite comedian Ray Romano.
He also voiced two Marine documentaries in 2016 and 2017.
In 2003, when awarded the prestigious Cecil B De Mile award at the Golden Globes, Hackman said of his acting career: “It’s all I ever wanted to do.
“So few people ever get what they really want in life. You give up a lot in terms of family, you are always in North Africa or someplace, but it is a make-believe world and it is what I wanted to do as a child.. I fulfilled a lot of my dreams.”
He leaves behind his three children from his first marriage, Christopher Allen, Elizabeth Jean, and Leslie Anne Hackman.
