Gene Hackman biography

Actor. Born Eugene Alden Hackman, on January 30, 1930, in San Bernardino, California. Raised mostly by his maternal grandmother in Danville, Illinois, Hackman dropped out of high school at age 16 to join the U.S. Marines. He trained as a radio operator and worked as a disc jockey during tours in Asia and the Pacific. After his discharge, he briefly studied journalism at the University of Illinois but soon moved to New York City to pursue a career in radio. During the 1950s, Hackman studied at New York’s School of Radio Technique and worked at several radio stations in the Midwest before deciding, in his late 20s, that he wanted to become an actor.
He enrolled as a student at the famous Pasadena Playhouse acting school outside Los Angeles, where (along with fellow student Dustin Hoffman) Hackman was voted “least likely to succeed” by his classmates. In 1956, he returned to New York, where he made his professional stage debut in Chaparral (1958). After landing appearances on television shows such as U.S. Steel Hour and The Defenders and a small role in his first feature film Mad Dog Coll (1961), Hackman had his first substantial movie role, in Lilith (1964), starring Warren Beatty. His association with Beatty led to Hackman’s breakthrough performance in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), for which he earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Since the success of Bonnie and Clyde, Hackman has worked steadily in Hollywood, regularly turning out as many as two or three films a year. He earned his second Oscar nomination in 1970, for his supporting role in I Never Sang for My Father. In 1971, he finally scored a leading role, garnering acclaim—and an Oscar for Best Actor—for his turn as New York policeman Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection. In the 1970s, he racked up a string of memorable performances in hit films, including The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Scarecrow (1973), co-starring Al Pacino, and The Conversation (1974), directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and Superman (1978), in which he starred as the villainous Lex Luthor.

By the late 1970s, his intense filming schedule had exhausted Hackman, and he took a brief sabbatical from movies, returning in 1981 in Beatty’s classic Reds. In the early 1980s, he made less successful film choices, starring in a number of forgettable films like All Night Long (1981), featuring his rare romantic turn opposite Barbra Streisand, and Uncommon Valor (1983).

His career was revived in the latter half of the decade, with Hoosiers (1986), No Way Out (1987), starring Kevin Costner, and Mississippi Burning (1988), for which he received his third Best Supporting Actor nomination.

In the early 1990s, Hackman underwent surgery for heart problems, but he continued to work steadily. His performance as the sadistic Sheriff Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s acclaimed Western Unforgiven (1992) finally earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He returned repeatedly (with less success) to the Western genre over the next several years, with Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), the sprawling Wyatt Earp (1994), also starring Costner, and The Quick and the Dead (1995). He also played a corrupt lawyer in the hit film adaptation of John Grisham’s best-selling thriller The Firm, starring Tom Cruise.

Hackman’s more recent films have showcased the broad range that he has displayed throughout his career. The villainous Hackman of the Superman films and The Unforgiven comes through in action-thrillers such as Crimson Tide (1995), co-starring Denzel Washington, Extreme Measures (1996), the death-row drama The Chamber (1996, also based on a Grisham novel), and Eastwood’s Absolute Power. In sharp comedies such as Get Shorty (1995) and The Birdcage (1996), by contrast, Hackman displays his comic ability with deadpan portrayals of utterly flawed characters: a struggling B-movie producer and a right-wing senator, respectively. In 1998, he played another flawed good guy—this time a renegade surveillance expert—in the hit film Enemy of the State, costarring Will Smith. His 2000 projects included The Replacements and Third Degree.

In 2001, Hackman impressed audiences and critics yet again with his performances in three very different films: David Mamet's Heist, the war film Behind Enemy Lines, and the eccentric comedy The Royal Tenenbaums, costarring Anjelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Ben Stiller, for which Hackman earned a Golden Globe nomination. Hackman has three children—Christopher, Elizabeth, and Leslie—with his first wife, Faye Maltese, whom he married in 1956 and divorced in 1982. In 1991, Hackman married Betsy Arakawa, a musician. The couple resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Hackman has lived since the early 1980s.