TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. We learned today that actor Gene Hackman has died at the age of 95. Yesterday, authorities found the bodies of Hackman, his wife, Betsy Arakawa, and their dog in their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We remember Gene Hackman with an interview Terry recorded with him in 1999.
Hackman was a two-time Oscar winner, whose movies included "Bonnie And Clyde," "The Conversation," "Mississippi Burning," "Unforgiven," "The Quick And The Dead," "Superman," "Hoosiers" and "The Royal Tenenbaums." He made his last film in 2004 and stepped back from acting. Hackman won his first Academy Award as the violent, racist narcotics detective, Popeye Doyle, in the 1971 film, "The French Connection."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE FRENCH CONNECTION")
GENE HACKMAN: (As Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle) All right, Popeye's here. Get your hands on your heads. Get off the bar and get on the wall. Come on, move. Move.
ROY SCHEIDER: (As Buddy "Cloudy" Russo) Come on, sweetheart, move.
HACKMAN: (As Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle) Hands out of your pockets.
SCHEIDER: (As Buddy "Cloudy" Russo) Turn around. Come on, turn around. Get on the wall. Get on...
HACKMAN: (As Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle) Get them up, get them up.
SCHEIDER: (As Buddy "Cloudy" Russo) Turn around. You, turn around. Hey, you drop that? Pick it up.
HACKMAN: (As Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle) Hold those hands up. Pick it up.
SCHEIDER: (As Buddy "Cloudy" Russo) Come on, move.
HACKMAN: (As Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle) What are you looking at? All right, bring it here. Get your hands out of your pockets. What's my name?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Doyle.
HACKMAN: (As Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle) What?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Mr. Doyle.
HACKMAN: (As Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle) Come here. You pick your feet?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) What?
HACKMAN: (As Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle) Do you - get over there, get your hands on your head.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TERRY GROSS: When you were preparing for your role as a, you know, narcotics cop for "French Connection," how did you see this role as comparing to other cops that you'd seen portrayed in movies?
HACKMAN: I try not to look at that kind of thing as an actor. I try to only look at characters and the script in a way that is always fresh for me. I ask myself a few very basic questions about how is this person like me? How is this person unlike me? And in answering those things is where I usually come up with the character.
GROSS: Would you be able to tell us how you answered them?
HACKMAN: Well, there's some very obvious things where I ask myself, for instance, in "The French Connection" I would say to myself, am I a policeman? No, of course not. What does it take to be a policeman? If I can really be honest about myself, given my personality, my physical makeup, what kind of a policeman would I be? Would I be able to do certain things that are required of me in this story? Yes, maybe. If I say to myself, no, then the next question is, what do I have to do in order to convince somebody that I am capable of doing that?
GROSS: So when you ask yourself, what do I have to do to become that person in a role, what answers did you give yourself? What did you have to do to become that person?
HACKMAN: Well, some of it was pure acting. And some of it, as I said before, that sometimes I would say to myself, I couldn't do this, I couldn't say that line to that character in reality. So then I have to ask myself, if you say that you can't say that in reality, then how are you going to act that? I would then give myself a situation where under some circumstance I would be able to do that. I would relate to an argument possibly that I had had with someone at some very high-voltage time in my life, to the point where I could say, OK, given the right circumstances, I can do that now. I will now try to recreate that moment, just to speak in layman's terms, for myself by doing it in a sensory way. What was I wearing that day that this event took place? What was the weather like? What was the atmosphere? What was the - and be very specific about that so that then I can create - recreate a situation for myself that was - that is similar to the situation in the script.
GROSS: You know, you were talking before about how when you do a character, you have to ask yourself what's similar about me and this character? What's different about me and this character? What would I have to do to fill in the gap between what he would do and what I would do? In at least two recent movies, you played characters with a real sadistic streak - the sheriff in "Unforgiven" and the sheriff in "The Quick And The Dead." And these were characters who definitely had a strong sadistic streak. What do you do to get in the spirit of a character like that?
HACKMAN: I find in me a sadistic streak. I find something in me that may be not very attractive, but that I feel would be valuable in this context. I think if we - if you search hard enough, you can find a lot of elements in yourself that you can use as an actor. You know, under certain circumstances, we're all capable of murder, I suppose. So you just have to find that circumstance. Sadism, I suppose, is not something that I find very attractive, but I guess there are certain things in me that will elicit that kind of thing.
GROSS: Well, on screen, you know, that the great sadists always have a lot of charisma (laughter).
HACKMAN: (Laughter) Well, that's true.
GROSS: So it must be fun to play roles like that.
HACKMAN: It is. It's always more fun to play heavy than it is to play a good guy. My kids are always asking me to play these things - grandfathers and kindly old gentlemen. And I just tell them that, you know, not that I dislike watching that kind of thing, but for me to play it is not as interesting.
GROSS: Do you get offers for kindly old gentlemen kind of roles?
HACKMAN: I have, yes. I have - grandfathers and things like that that are all knowing, and...
GROSS: (Laughter).
HACKMAN: ...Wise and all that. And it - they just don't interest me.
GROSS: You've actually dropped out of acting a couple of times, didn't you?
HACKMAN: Mm-hmm.
GROSS: Why?
HACKMAN: Yeah. Well, I thought I wanted to paint. I thought I wanted to do a lot of things. And once I started doing those things, I found that I didn't have the skill that I pretend to have as an actor, and so I kind of drifted back to it. If you've done it as long as I have, it's very hard to drop it. You know, there's something very seductive about acting because, you know, you come to work, and there's 90 people standing there waiting for you to do something. And there is something both very heavy and seductive and unattractive about that (laughter).
MOSLEY: Gene Hackman speaking with Terry in 1999. He died yesterday at the age of 95.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAVID SHIRE'S "THE CONVERSATION")
MOSLEY: If you'd like to catch up on interviews you've missed, like our conversation with the Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins on the Murdoch family, or author Philip Shenon on the Catholic church, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of FRESH AIR interviews. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org/freshair.
FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAVID SHIRE'S "THE CONVERSATION") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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