So Long, Gene Hackman

I was grabbing a drink at the Tesuque Village Market outside Santa Fe, New Mexico when I finally spotted him. Stepping out of the romantic eatery El Nido with a cane in hand, there he was one sunny spring day—Gene Hackman. Living in Santa Fe for so many years, I had heard the stories from friends who had seen the man with their own eyes, but this was my first time spotting him in the wild. All 90-some years of age, he chose his steps carefully with his faithful wife, the classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, by his side. 

After a long, illustrious career, Hackman died this week, along with Arakawa and one of their dogs inside the Santa Fe home they shared. Santa Fe Sheriff Adan Mendoza initially stated there was no foul play at the scene but later walked back those comments after the Fire Department found no obvious signs of a gas leak in the residence. Whatever caused their deaths will be of great speculation in the coming days and weeks, but for now we can be certain only that we have lost one of the finest actors to ever do it.

The star of Hoosiers, The French Connection, The Conversation, The Royal Tenenbaums, Unforgiven, and so many others, Hackman had found some peace in the high desert hills that I came to love myself. It was Hackman, after all, who had, in part, galvanized me to drive across the wide open plains of America to Santa Fe as a young intrepid film student. Little did I know then that the reclusive man whose star turn in Wes Anderson’s Tenenbaums inspired in me a deep love for film was poking around the place.

He lived near Hyde Park, a cozy little suburb nestled above the capital of New Mexico on a road aptly named Old Sunset Trail. After a long day’s work, I’d often walk across City Different and stake out a spot along the same ridge to watch the blistering sun set in front of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains. Anyone who has done the same will know why Hackman and Arakawa chose this particular enclave as a resting place. Far from the glitz and glam and pollution of Los Angeles, there is a beauty and peace to the high desert that is unfathomable until you feel it for yourself.

Though I grew up a devotee of the silver screen, it was Hackman’s reluctant performance in Anderson’s 2001 masterpiece The Royal Tenenbaums which spoke most earnestly to me as a young man. The chain-smoking, fur-coat-wearing father of four geniuses, Hackman’s character was neither short on wit nor flair nor gruff. “It was written for him against his wishes,” noted Anderson. “He was sort of forced to do the movie. I just kept bothering him. I wore him down.” The cagey humor, the quiet sadness, the indefatigable spirit; Hackman had it all. It would be one of his final films, part of a sterling career that spanned nearly five decades. The two-time Oscar winner is remembered for his performances in so many great films that what you remember him by says more about your preferences than it does about Hackman’s acting chops.

On this day, some will recall Hackman sitting alongside a pile of rubble playing the blues on a saxophone in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 detective triumph The Conversation. Others will remember his hard-edged motivational locker room speech in David Anspaugh’s 1986 sports classic Hoosiers, which still inspires sportsmen of all stripes to this day. Some will remember his brief but hilarious role as the blind hermit in Mel Brooks’s seminal comedy Young Frankenstein. And many others will think too of his monumental performance as Sheriff Little Bill Daggett in Unforgiven, for which he earned an Academy Award. 

One of Hackman’s most underrated roles, for my money, is his performance as the outlaw-turned-mayor John Herod in Sam Raimi’s 1995 fever western The Quick and the Dead in which he starred opposite a 21-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio. The gunslinging epic, woefully overlooked in Hackman’s oeuvre, showcases all the traits that made Hackman a gigantic force in the film world. What made Hackman so special as an actor was his inescapable lightness of being. Behind the mustache, behind the receding hairline, behind the rollicking exterior, Hackman played like a gentle giant, someone who could strike fear in the hearts of audiences even while alleviating their pains with his shy grin. 

Born in San Bernardino, California in 1930, Hackman had anything but an idyllic childhood. His father doled out physical punishment routinely on the young Hackman and abandoned the family for good when Gene was only 13 years old, an act that Hackman later credited with his career arc. “Maybe that’s why I became an actor,” Hackman told Vanity Fair in 2004. “I doubt I would have become so sensitive to human behavior if that hadn’t happened to me as a child—if I hadn’t realized how much one small gesture can mean.”

He joined the Marines at the age of 16 and spent nearly half a decade in the service, earning the rank of Private First Class. He moved to Pasadena where he befriended future film star Dustin Hoffman at the Pasadena Playhouse. The pair were voted “least likely to succeed” before moving to New York City in pursuit of their dreams. There, while working as a hotel doorman, Hackman encountered a former teacher from the playhouse who told Hackman he “wouldn’t amount to anything.” But Hackman had other ideas. 

“It was more psychological warfare, because I wasn’t going to let those f–kers get me down,” Hackman recalled. “I insisted with myself that I would continue to do whatever it took to get a job. It was like me against them.”

Hackman wasn’t even supposed to be in arguably his greatest triumph. Director William Friedkin attempted to sign a number of actors including Paul Newman for his 1971 neo-noir classic The French Connection before studios forced his hand with Hackman. But speeding along Stillwell Avenue in Brooklyn, Hackman’s electrifying turn as a gritty cop with an axe to grind couldn’t have been played by anyone else. Styled after the super cool aesthetics of French actor Alain Delon, Hackman added something wholly rough and coarse and American to the anti-hero mold developed by Melville and Godard and Rivette. 

“American movies have always had certain kinds of self-styled actors who shouldn’t be stars but are and Gene is in the company of Bogart, Tracy, and Cagney,” explained Missouri Breaks director Arthur Penn in a 1998 essay in Film Comment that described Hackman as a “late-blooming romantic leading man.”

Crimson Tide, Mississippi Burning, The Firm—the list goes on and on. But for me, as a middle-aged millennial who came to know Hackman first and foremost near the end of his illustrious career, nothing stood out as much as Hackman’s hilarious and heartfelt turn as Royal Tenenbaum, the down-on-his luck New York lawyer who rekindles an offbeat relationship with his down-on-their-luck adult children. Dressed in tweed and conspiring with his trusted valet Pagoda to win back the love and respect of his forlorn family, Royal was a role only Hackman could’ve played. Behind the incorrigible and brittle exterior, Hackman was capable of tapping into a gentle humor that elevated the film into the sublime. It was the perfect end to a career that had seen Hackman play many violent and deranged characters.

Hackman projected an undeniable screen presence. He could be vulgar, ferocious, anxious, and mean. But he could also be warm, kind, serene, and loving. Hackman was more than an actor; he was an artist, one of the greatest to ever do it. His tour de force performances across a five-decade career will be celebrated as long as there are people who watch. Here’s to the man. Rest easy, Gene Hackman.