The Hidden Truth Of Gene Hackman

In February 2025, the world mourned the tragic death of two-time Oscar winner Gene Hackman, who died alongside his wife, 64-year-old classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, and one of their dogs at their Santa Fe home under somewhat murky circumstances. As of late February, initial reports asserted there was no foul play involved (the 95-year-old actor's daughter initially suspected toxic fumes), although a local police detective on the scene found enough suspicious evidence to justify further investigation.

Meanwhile, fans remain focused on the indelible performances that Hackman left behind. Among his most memorable were a paranoid surveillance expert in "The Conversation;" Buck Barrow, brother of the titular outlaw in "Bonnie and Clyde;" hardboiled New York cop Popeye Doyle in "The French Connection" (which won him the first of two Academy Awards), and a passionate yet temperamental college basketball coach in "Hoosiers."

Hackman retired from acting after making his final film, 2004's "Welcome to Mooseport," and spent his final two decades living quietly in New Mexico. While he may have been out of the public eye for years, he will always be remembered as being Hollywood's everyman, a talented and versatile actor who imbued his characters with humanity, in all its complexity.

Gene Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, but grew up in Danville, Illinois, a small town (about 28,000 residents) near the Illinois-Indiana border. During his childhood, Hackman's cousin was close friends with another destined star, actor and comedian Dick Van Dyke. While the future "Mary Poppins" chimney sweep was a few years older than Hackman, they crossed paths in Danville.

Despite its small population, Danville has done a solid job of producing celebrities. In addition to Van Dyke and Hackman, other stars who hailed from the town are Van Dyke's brother, "Coach" star Jerry Van Dyke, Hollywood song-and-dance man Donald O'Connor, and New York cabaret singer Bobby Short.

As it happened, all five men returned to their hometown in 1988, as the guests of honor at a benefit to raise money to restore the town's historic Fischer Theatre, which first opened its doors in 1884. Hackman, in fact, had a very personal connection to the historic theater. "From stories passed down through generations, I understand that Gene once worked as an usher at the Fischer," Crystal Bivans, the theater's executive director, told Danville's local newspaper, The News-Gazette.

Gene Hackman was just 13 when he watched his father drive away and casually wave goodbye, one of several tragic stories about Hackman. He never came back, and a few years later, Hackman decided it was time for him to leave Danville as well. At age 16, he lied about his age and enlisted in the U.S. Marines. "I left home when I was 16 because I was looking for adventure," Hackman told Time.

The next few months were a whirlwind for the teenager. Hackman was sent to South Carolina for basic training before boarding a military transport ship that would take him to China, where he was assigned to be stationed. A role as a radio operator evolved into Hackman becoming an on-air DJ for Armed Forces Radio in the Pacific. As a Marine, he also served in Qingdao, Shanghai, and then Hawaii. While Hackman enjoyed the job, he was demoted — not once but three times — for leaving his duty station without permission. "I was not a good Marine," Hackman conceded during a 2004 appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live."  There are many strict rules U.S. Marines have to follow, and Hackman admitted he'd always had difficulties respecting authority. "I made corporal once and was promptly busted."

A motorcycle crash brought his military career to an end. Recovering from a broken shoulder, along with an injured knee and leg, doctors deemed him unfit for active duty, and he was summarily discharged.

The period after Gene Hackman's stint in the Marines was a time of aimless uncertainty. An attempt at journalism school didn't pan out, so Hackman leaned back on a childhood dream. "From the time I saw my first movie as a boy, I wanted to be an actor," he said in a 1989 interview with The New York Times Magazine. That led him to California, where he began taking classes at the Pasadena Playhouse. He studied acting alongside two other aspiring young actors: Dustin Hoffman and "The Godfather" alum Robert Duvall. He and Hoffman clicked immediately. "We kind of hit it off as soon as we knew each other," Hackman recalled. "I was older than everybody and Dusty was the oddball," he added. 

Of course, neither of the two sported the kind of physical characteristics Hollywood expected from matinee idols during the late 1950s. That was one reason why they were voted "least likely to succeed" by the other students. "I was not considered one of their most promising students," Hackman recalled for Connoisseur magazine (via Deseret News). 

After receiving the lowest grade the school had ever awarded, Hackman was kicked out after just one year. Just a few years later, Hackman and Hoffman must have experienced a unique degree of satisfaction when both received their first Oscar nominations in 1967.

Gene Hackman still felt a burning desire to act when he moved to New York. Living at the YMCA, he auditioned for acting jobs he rarely got, and took whatever work he could find. "The worst job I ever had was working nights in the Chrysler Building," he told Time. "I was part of a team of about five guys, and we polished the leather furniture. We had to work all night because people needed their chairs during the day. I wasn't very good at it."

Another job saw him working as a doorman at a Times Square hotel, a particularly low ebb as his fledgling acting career floundered. "I wanted to be an actor, but I was not willing to commit to it," he observed to The New York Times Magazine. One day, he was standing at his post when he saw his former drill instructor — who instantly recognized Hackman and offered a blunt assessment. "As he walked by me, he never looked at me, really, he said, 'Hackman, you're a sorry son of a b****,'" Hackman recalled during an appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman." 

"That was a turning point for me," he told The New York Times, recalling how that moment filled him with determination to succeed. "I was so embarrassed by what I was doing in New York," he recalled.

Gene Hackman's tenacity paid off and he began working increasingly as an actor. This saw him cast in various NYC-shot TV shows in the early 1960s, including the likes of "Naked City," and "The Defenders." In 1964, Hackman was cast in his first feature film, "Lillith." Starring rising young star Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg, the film flopped.

Nevertheless, it was the most important casting of Hackman's career. When Beatty was preparing for his 1967 film "Bonnie and Clyde," he remembered Hackman from "Lillith," and suggested director Arthur Penn cast him as Buck Barrow, older brother of his character, outlaw Clyde Barrow. 

The film proved to be a major hit, cementing Beatty's leading man status. After years of struggle and obscurity, Hackman landed firmly on Hollywood's radar when his performance in "Bonnie & Clyde" garnered him an Oscar nomination. He catapulted from bit player to movie star, although the movies weren't great, at least not at first. It wasn't until several years and nine mediocre movies later that he would strike gold as Popeye Doyle in "The French Connection," the film that secured his stardom the way "Bonnie & Clyde" had done for Beatty.

When TV producer Sherwood Schwartz was casting a new situation comedy about a blended family he'd dubbed "The Brady Bunch," Gene Hackman was on his short list to play the dad, Mike Brady. Schwartz was hopeful he'd be able to set up a meeting with Hackman, although he certainly recognized he'd face an uphill battle trying to convince an Oscar nominee to star in a sitcom from the guy responsible for "Gilligan's Island." 

According to an excerpt from Kimberly Potts' book, "The Way We All Became The Brady Bunch: How the Canceled Sitcom Became the Beloved Pop Culture Icon We Are Still Talking About Today" (via an excerpt in Entertainment Weekly), Schwartz never even got the chance to try. ABC network executives torpedoed the idea, believing that Hackman, despite his Oscar nod, was still a nobody to TV viewers. The suits in charge refused to even let Schwartz place him under consideration, let alone set up a meeting.

Ultimately, everything worked out as it should have. Robert Reed was cast in the show, which went on to become a massive hit and a pop-culture touchstone that has endured decades. Hackman, on the other hand, won his first Oscar the year after the series premiered.

Gene Hackman not only achieved movie stardom while staying within the lane usually reserved for character actors, he also demonstrated the ability to be equally effective in the darkest dramas and the silliest comedies. When it comes to the latter, it's not hyperbole to describe Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" as a comedy masterpiece, and Hackman's brief cameo as one of the film's funniest moments. 

Hackman was cast in the role by Gene Wilder, with whom he played tennis each Saturday, after Hackman complained that he hadn't been given a chance to demonstrate his comedic side. That led to a scene in which the monster (Peter Boyle) created by Gene Wilder's Dr. Frankenstein (pronounced Fronk-en-steen) gets loose, and is befriended by a blind man (Hackman) who welcomes him into his home. Hackman proved himself to be adept at physical comedy, demonstrated when Hackman's blind character serves a ladle of piping-hot soup that misses the monster's bowl and winds up in his lap. When the monster is accidentally set on fire while attempting to light a cigar, he flees the home of his new friend, who walks to the door and calls out, "Wait! Where you going? I was gonna make espresso."  

According to Hollywood lore, Hackman improvised that last line. The reason the scene then immediately fades to black was because Brooks and the entire crew spontaneously burst into uproarious laughter immediately after Hackman's ad-libbed punchline.

Gene Hackman spent the 1970s making such classic films as "The French Connection" and "The Conversation," and set the template for respected actors portraying comic-book supervillains when he played Lex Luthor in 1978's "Superman." At the same time, however, he was also earning a reputation for having an explosive temper and getting into fierce clashes with directors. According to The Independent, crew members who worked on Hackman's films had nicknamed him Vesuvius, in honor of his volcanic temper.

That temper, by the way, wasn't confined to film sets; in 2001, Hackman took it to the streets of L.A. when he was driving along Sunset Blvd. and rear-ended a car. Fenders were bent and harsh words exchanged when he and the other driver exited their vehicles to inspect the damage. A heated argument ensued; when the other guy called Hackman an anti-gay slur, the actor responded by throwing some punches. The fight ended when his opponent thrust his knee into Hackman's groin, causing him to drop to the pavement.

In a 2011 interview with GQ, Hackman admitted he was aware of his reputation, and wasn't proud of it. "I hate that idea, because it's the antithesis of the creative spirit and what it takes to be a creative person," he explained. "But you do, sometimes, what happens in the spur of the moment. I, unfortunately, kind of react."

By the 1990s, Gene Hackman had started gravitating away from the gritty, violent movies that had characterized his early success. Interviewed for the Fort Worth-Star Telegram (via The Baltimore Sun), he admitted that he did express some remorse over not venturing more into comedic or romantic roles, saying, "I loved the 'Superman' assignments, on account of the comic villainy I was allowed to do there, and the spoofing good humor in 'Young Frankenstein,' and the idea of myself as a romantic leading man ..."

It was his grown children, he explained, who had been "encouraging me to bypass the kinds of violent portrayals that I might've routinely accepted, oh, 10, 15, 20-odd years ago," including an offer he turned down for a certain high-profile role that won a Best Actor Oscar for Anthony Hopkins. "That influence, my family's influence, by itself, is what caused me to move away from 'The Silence of the Lambs,' which I had been invited to direct and star in — either as the senior FBI man, or in the Dr. Hannibal Lecter role — in order to steer clear of the horrific nature of the story," Hackman said. 

While one might assume Hackman might have felt that "The Silence of the Lambs" was the one that got away, he insisted he didn't. "Regrets about 'Silence of the Lambs?' No. It seems to have fared just fine without me ..." he added.

During the 1980s, Gene Hackman gravitated toward a hobby that had entranced fellow movie stars such as Paul Newman and Steve McQueen: driving race cars. Hackman had done much of his own driving in "The French Connection," and was really bitten by the racing bug when he was invited to compete in a celebrity race in the mid-1970s. He began training at Bob Bondurant's California driving school, before joining the team of race legend Dan Gurney for long-distance endurance racing events in the 1980s.

As he told the Los Angeles Times in 1988, he'd seriously considered giving up acting for racing, but ultimately didn't feel he had the personality for it. "You can learn some of the skills of racing, you can learn all the mechanical things, but there's a certain part of it that really no one can teach you — that killer instinct," Hackman explained. "You have to be very competitive. You need to have that edge about you. The good ones all have that."

Hackman also detailed the paradox of racing: in order to drive insanely fast, one's mind must remain slow. "You have to think in a very orderly fashion," he said. What you do is try to slow everything down instead of getting yourself all excited and expending a lot of energy. Instead, you try to slow it all down so you can go quicker. It's a very strange process."

In addition to driving race cars, Gene Hackman also had a real love of architecture and interior design. That was evident in the Santa Fe home where he and wife Betsy Arakawa spent their final years. Back in 1990, the couple had invited Architectural Digest into the home, revealing it was the 10th place that he'd renovated and indicating it was more about the journey than the destination. "I don't know what's wrong with me," Hackman said. "I guess I like the process, and when it's over, it's over."

Hackman's vision for the Santa Fe place involved knocking down walls to create an open-concept space. "It's totally different from my other houses," Hackman said. "The Montecito house was very formal." That house, in fact, had previously been profiled in a 1982 issue of Architectural Digest, when he was still married to his first wife, Faye Maltese. "We spent a year-and-a-half on it and it gives me a great deal of pleasure — continuing pleasure, you might say, because we are always working on it," Hackman said of the apparently ongoing renovations on that home.

In 2004, Gene Hackman played a former U.S. president who returns to his small Maine hometown in the comedy "Welcome to Mooseport," which would be his final film. At the time, he didn't give any indications that his health had been the reason for his retirement, but revealed that was the case in a 2020 interview with Empire. "The straw that broke the camel's back was actually a stress test that I took in New York," Hackman said. "The doctor advised me that my heart wasn't in the kind of shape that I should be putting it under any stress."

That led Hackman to pull the plug on his legendary acting career and make Santa Fe home his base, which is why people rarely heard about Hackman in recent years. For Hackman, however, retirement without some sort of creative outlet was simply unacceptable, and he focused on writing novels. He'd previously written one, "Wake of the Perdido Star," a collaboration with Daniel Lenihan that was published in 1999. He teamed up with Lenihan again for "Justice for None," published shortly after "Welcome to Mooseport" bombed at the box office. 

In his retirement, Hackman (joined by Lenihan) threw himself into writing, and wrote several more books in the years that followed. "It's very relaxing for me," said Hackman of his literary pursuits. "I don't picture myself as a great writer, but I really enjoy the process ..."