JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Actor Gene Hackman was found dead yesterday, along with his wife, Betsy Arakawa, and one of their dogs in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Authorities have not yet released details about the cause of death. Though Hackman retired from acting two decades ago, the Oscar-winning star of "The French Connection" and "Unforgiven" had long been among Hollywood's most celebrated performers. Critic Bob Mondello offers an appreciation.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: His voice was a growl, his gaze piercing and you did not want to be on his wrong side when he was agitated, as he almost always was in the role that won him his first Oscar, the relentless narcotics cop Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in "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.
MONDELLO: Whether making a drug bust or careening through the streets of Brooklyn in one of Hollywood's most famous car chases, Hackman held your eye, just as he had a few years earlier, earning Oscar nominations as the hero's explosive older brother in "Bonnie And Clyde" and a son caring for an elderly parent in "I Never Sang For My Father." One of Hollywood's hardest-working actors, he churned out 20 films in the 1970s. He played everything from a water-logged pastor in "The Poseidon Adventure" to a blind, lonely hermit...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN")
HACKMAN: (As Harold) A visitor is all I ask...
MONDELLO: ...In the Mel Brooks comedy, "Young Frankenstein."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN")
HACKMAN: (As Harold) ...A temporary companion to help me pass a few short hours in my lonely life.
PETER BOYLE: (As Frankenstein's Monster, roaring).
MONDELLO: With Peter Boyle's monster almost entirely mute, the scene was all Hackman, from introductions...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN")
HACKMAN: (As Harold) What is your name?
BOYLE: (As Frankenstein's Monster) Hmm.
HACKMAN: (As Harold) I didn't get that.
BOYLE: (As Frankenstein's Monster) Hmm.
HACKMAN: (As Harold) Oh.
MONDELLO: ...To the moment when he tried to light a cigar and set the monster's thumb on fire. He went broader a few years later as the man of steel's nemesis, Lex Luthor, in "Superman," before deciding he needed a break from acting - lasted all of 18 months before he was back to making several films a year, playing a basketball coach in search of redemption in "Hoosiers"...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "HOOSIERS")
HACKMAN: (As Norman Dale) If you put your effort and concentration into playing to your potential, to be the best that you can be, I don't care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game, in my book, we're going to be winners.
MONDELLO: ...And a reformed good old boy of an FBI agent in the civil rights drama "Mississippi Burning."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MISSISSIPPI BURNING")
HACKMAN: (As Rupert Anderson) Don't you go mistaking me for some whole other body.
MICHAEL ROOKER: (As Frank Bailey, groaning).
HACKMAN: (As Rupert Anderson) You got your brains in your [expletive] if you think we're just going to fade away. We're going to be here till this thing's finished.
MONDELLO: By the end of the '80s, he'd added another 20 credits to his list. Even heart surgery in 1990 didn't slow him down. He was in three films that year, two the next, and a year after that, won another Oscar when Clint Eastwood asked him to do something he'd said he didn't want to do anymore - play a violent character. His sadistic sheriff in "Unforgiven" was certainly that.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "UNFORGIVEN")
HACKMAN: (As Little Bill Daggett) I guess you think I'm kicking you, Bob.
(SOUNDBITE OF KICK)
HACKMAN: (As Little Bill Daggett) But it ain't so. What I'm doing...
(SOUNDBITE OF KICK)
HACKMAN: (As Little Bill Daggett) ...Is talking.
(SOUNDBITE OF HORSE WHINNYING)
HACKMAN: (As Little Bill Daggett) You hear? I'm talking to all those villains down there in Kansas.
MONDELLO: Eugene Allen Hackman got his start studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he and fellow student Dustin Hoffman were at one point voted least likely to succeed. Must have been quite an acting class. The two of them came east to New York, where they roomed with pal Robert Duvall in the early 1960s and competed for theater roles. Hackman's big break came with the Broadway comedy "Any Wednesday," and for the next four decades he made plausible and real a raft of flawed, good guys and intriguing villains, from a U.S. president with a violent streak in "Absolute Power" to a long-absent family patriarch whose stories can't be trusted in "The Royal Tenenbaums."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS")
HACKMAN: (As Royal Tenenbaum) He saved my life, you know. Thirty years ago, I was knifed in a bazaar in Calcutta. He carried me to the hospital on his back.
GRANT ROSENMEYER: (As Ari Tenenbaum) Who stabbed you?
HACKMAN: (As Royal Tenenbaum) He did.
MONDELLO: That was one of five films he made in 2001 just before retiring from acting to write and paint, saying he didn't want to keep pressing and go out on a sour note. Gene Hackman may have been the only person who thought that that was possible.
I'm Bob Mondello. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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