Gene Hackman, the two-time Academy Award-winning actor known for his roles in films like The French Connection and Unforgiven, has died at the age of 95.
Hackman, his wife Arakawa, and their dog were found dead at their home in New Mexico on Wednesday after deputies performed a welfare check, according to CNN. An investigation is ongoing, but foul play is not suspected.
Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California on January 30th, 1930. Lying about his age, he enlisted in the Marine Corps when he was just 16, serving four years as a field radio operator before being stationed in China, Hawaii, and Japan. He was discharged in 1951.
As he began to pursue an acting career, Hackman joined the historic Pasadena Playhouse, where he met fellow aspiring actor Dustin Hoffman. The two weren’t especially popular in the Playhouse; they were voted “Least Likely to Succeed,” and Hackman ultimately moved to New York City to try his luck there. After appearing in a series of off-Broadway plays, he appeared alongside Jean Seberg and Warren Beatty in Lilith, his first film role.
In 1967, Hackman portrayed Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde, a role that earned him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He went on to win a string of awards in the 1970s, including Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his work in I Never Sang for My Father in 1970 and the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection in 1971.
After The French Connection, Hackman went from a supporting actor to a leading man. He starred in 10 films — including The Poseidon Adventure and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation — from 1970 to 1974, becoming the most prolific Hollywood actor at the time. In 1974, he appeared as Harold the Blind Man in Young Frankenstein, and in 1975, he appeared as one of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Western Bite the Bullet. A second French Connection followed, as did the war film A Bridge Too Far and 1978’s Superman: The Movie, where Hackman portrayed Lex Luthor.
Hackman reunited with Beatty for 1981’s Reds. The new decade proved just as busy for the actor as the previous one; Hackman appeared in nine films between 1985 and 1988, including Hoosiers, No Way Out, and Mississippi Burning. For the latter, he was nominated for the Oscar Award for Best Actor.
Hackman won his second Oscar for his supporting role in Clint Eastwood’s 1992 film Unforgiven. Throughout the ’90s, he worked with the decade’s biggest movie stars, including Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Sharon Stone, Leonardo DiCaprio, John Travolta, Will Smith, Robin Williams, and Russell Crowe. In 2001, he led Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums as the titular family’s patriarch, winning a Golden Globe in the process. In 2003, he and Hoffman appeared in the legal thriller Runaway Jury, finally cementing the duo’s success as actors.
In 2004, Hackman appeared alongside Ray Romano in Welcome to Mooseport, which became his final film. The actor announced to Larry King that year that he had retired from acting, though he briefly came out of retirement later to narrate the Marine Corps documentaries The Unknown Flag Raiser of Iwo Jima (2016) and We, The Marines (2017).
In addition to his acting career, Hackman was also a novelist. He published three works of historical fiction with Daniel Lenihan — 1999’s Wake of the Perdido Star, 2004’s Justice for None, and 2008’s Escape From Andersonville — and wrote 2011’s Payback at Morning Peak and 2013’s Pursuit on his own.
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