The actor Gene Hackman has died, at the age of 95. He was found this week in his home in Santa Fe, along with his wife, Betsy Arakawa, and a family dog. Authorities are still trying to figure out what happened.
Gene Hackman was long retired from Hollywood, but the characters he played in his four decade career will stick with us. It felt like he could turn himself into almost anyone.
He was a barbarous and riotous cop in The French Connection; a blunt-headed, bank robbing brother alongside Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde; a savage small-town sheriff in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven; and a minister who leaps through flames to lead passengers to safety in The Poseidon Adventure, even as the man of God himself is left to dangle from a valve-wheel.
Gene Hackman played Superman's arch-villain, Lex Luthor, with a comic glint. "There's a strong streak of good in you, Superman," he tells Christopher Reeve. "But then nobody's perfect..."
You might see why Gene Hackman would try to find a life playing other people. His father used to beat him, and left the family when Gene was 13. At 16, he lied about his age and ran off to join the Marines.
"I just had to get out," he once told the Los Angeles Times.
He played a son who looks back on a difficult relationship with his father in Robert Anderson's I Never Sang For My Father, which Gene Hackman opens by saying, "Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind…"
He was friends with Dustin Hoffman when they were young actors at the Pasadena Playhouse in the 1950's, and voted "the least likely to succeed." Gene Hackman, of course, went on to win two Oscars, nine Golden Globes, and many other awards; his friend has done pretty well, too.
Gene Hackman leaves a lot of memories for us movie-goers. I think one that sinks most into me is in Hoosiers. He plays a strict basketball coach who spurs a small-town high school team to glory. But he sets aside all his macho bluster to tell them as they take the court for the last time, "I love you guys."
You can feel how hard, and how necessary it is for that flinty coach to force himself to say that. Gene Hackman could utter just four simple words, and make a great film moment.
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