Gene Hackman, prolific Oscar-winning actor, found dead at home at 95 years old Los Gene Hackman, the prolific Oscar-winning actor whose studied portraits ranged from reluctant heroes to conniving villains and made him one of the industry’s most respected and honoured performers, has been found dead along with his wife at their home. He was 95.
Hackman was a frequent and versatile presence on screen from the 1960s until his retirement. His dozens of films included the Academy Award favourites “The French Connection” and “Unforgiven”, a breakout performance in “Bonnie and Clyde”, a classic bit of farce in “Young Frankenstein”, a turn as the comic book villain Lex Luthor in “Superman” and the title character in Wes Anderson’s 2001 “The Royal Tenenbaums”.
He seemed capable of any kind of role – whether an uptight buffoon in “Birdcage”, a college coach finding redemption in the sentimental favourite “Hoosiers” or a secretive surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola’s Watergate-era release “The Conversation”.
“Gene Hackman a great actor, inspiring and magnificent in his work and complexity,” Coppola said on Instagram. “I mourn his loss, and celebrate his existence and contribution.” Although self-effacing and unfashionable, Hackman held special status within Hollywood – heir to Spencer Tracy as an everyman, actor’s actor, curmudgeon and reluctant celebrity.
He embodied the ethos of doing his job, doing it very well, and letting others worry about his image. Beyond the obligatory appearances at awards ceremonies, he was rarely seen on the social circuit and made no secret of his disdain for the business side of show business.
“Actors tend to be shy people,” he told Film Comment in 1988. “There is perhaps a component of hostility in that shyness, and to reach a point where you don’t deal with others in a hostile or angry way, you choose this medium for yourself …
Then you can express yourself and get this wonderful feedback.” He was an early retiree – essentially done, by choice, with movies by his mid-70s – and a late bloomer. Hackman was 35 when cast for “Bonnie and Clyde” and past 40 when he won his first Oscar, as the rules-bending New York City detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in the 1971 thriller about tracking down Manhattan drug smugglers, “The French Connection”. (AP)
