Gene Hackman Biography

Gene was born during the Great Depression years when work and money were both scarce. His family moved from town to town a great deal, finally settling in Danville, Illinois, when Gene's father found work as a printing operative at the local newspaper. The family moved in with Gene’s maternal grandmother, Beatrice.

Eugene and Lyda divorced in 1943, when Gene was 13-years-old. Three years later, he decided to enlist with the Marine Corps. He served three years as a marine, during which time he worked as a field radio operator. It was around this time that he caught the acting bug. As a child he’d been inspired by movie stars like James Cagney and Errol Flynn. But in 1951 he attended a showing of the film A Streetcar Named Desire with his father, and was so impressed with lead actor Marlon Brando’s performance that as he was leaving the cinema after the movie, he told his father that he wanted to become an actor.

"Psychologically, Gene and myself did not think about making it in the terms that people think about. We fully expected to be failures for our entire life." - Dustin Hoffman

After completing his military service, Gene headed off for New York, where he worked in a wide range of menial, low-paid jobs before deciding to move back to Illinois to study TV production and journalism. At the age of 30, Gene moved back to California, where he joined the Pasadena Playhouse in order to train as an actor, thanks to the student funding that was made available through the G.I. Bill. Gene didn’t do particularly well at the Playhouse, though, and flunked out of his course after just three months of study. Whilst at the Playhouse, however, he became friends and later room-mates with another aspiring actor called Dustin Hoffman. Interestingly, the two budding actors, who were both destined to become Academy Award winners in years to come, were both voted “least likely to succeed” by their class-mates.

Piqued and infuriated by the put-downs he‘d received whilst studying at the Playhouse, Gene returned to New York to pursue his dreams of acting, closely followed by his friend Dustin Hoffman, and another young actor called Robert Duvall. The threesome found it a struggle to survive in the Big Apple whilst waiting for their “big break”; at one stage, Gene was working as a hotel doorman when one of his instructors from the Playhouse walked past. “There, I told you that you wouldn’t make it!” jeered the instructor. Happily, Gene went on to prove him wrong. Room-mates Hoffman and Hackman would often go the rooftop of their New York apartment building and play the drums: Gene played the conga drums and Hoffman played the bongo drums; they played music as a kind of homage to their mutual idol Marlon Brando, who they’d heard played music in clubs. Amusingly, Dustin Hoffman has said about this period, “Psychologically, Gene and myself did not think about making it in the terms that people think about. We fully expected to be failures for our entire life. Meaning that we would always be scrambling to get a part.” Gene gained his first experience of acting in several off-Broadway plays until finally, in 1964, he was offered the opportunity to co-star in a play called Any Wednesday, alongside actress Sandy Dennis. This role turned out to Gene’s passport to Hollywood, and was soon followed by offers of film acting roles.

Gene’s first movie acting role was a small part playing a character called Norman in the movie Lilith, starring Warren Beatty, made in 1964. But he didn’t really begin to hit the big time until he took the part of Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He received a second nomination for the same award three years later, for his part in I Never Sang For My Father, which starred Melvyn Douglas and Estelle Parsons. Gene finally succeeded in winning an Oscar - this time for Best Actor - for his stunning performance as Popeye Doyle in the blockbuster movie, The French Connection (1971). Critics and film buffs alike consider this to be one of Gene’s most memorable roles, and it established him once and for all as a leading man in Hollywood. Leading roles in The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), which was also nominated for several Oscars, followed his success as Popeye Doyle. Interestingly, Hackman’s performance as Harry Caul in The Conversation was ranked number 37 in Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Performances Of All Time in 2006. Gene himself said that he based his acting of this role on one of his uncles and a fellow marine he had known well. He also commented that the marine “probably became a serial killer.”

That same year Gene showed movie audiences that he had a gift as a comedic actor too, by playing the Blindman in the Mel Brooks movie, Young Frankenstein. During the 1970s, he also played the role of Major General Stanislaw F. Sosabowski in the glossy war epic, A Bridge Too Far (1977). He then went on to play a starring role in the original Superman movies, giving memorable performances as the villainous Lex Luthor in Superman: The Movie (1978) and Superman II (1980).

Throughout the 1980s, Gene moved effortlessly between leading and supporting roles, and earned himself yet another Academy Award nomination for his part as Agent Rupert Anderson in Mississippi Burning (1988). He became renowned for his ability to “become” the characters that he played, and for the versatility of his acting styles. He delivers brutal, hard-edged performances in dramas such as The French Connection and Mississippi Burning, but is also capable of performing hilariously funny comic turns in The Birdcage (1996) and Heartbreakers (2001).

As the Nineties dawned, Gene encountered major health problems, and was forced to take a break from acting while he underwent heart surgery in 1990. But he was soon back on form, and fit enough to play the part of the violent sheriff Bill Daggett in Unforgiven, directed by Clint Eastwood. Although Gene initially turned down the part, this movie actually won the Academy Award for Best Film. Gene’s stellar performance earned him yet another Oscar, this time as Best Supporting Actor. However, in an interview given after the film came out, Gene vowed not to appear in any more violent movies. In a press interview, he stated that his role of Max Millan in Scarecrow (1973) is his own personal favourite, but that he was put off acting in art house movies like Scarecrow when the movie turned out to be a box office flop; Gene went on to explain that he found it very disappointing to work hard on a film that then failed to make money, or earn any awards. According to Gene, he based his subsequent choice of movie roles not simply on the virtues of the script, but also on the size of the pay cheque. Although he’d only been paid $100,000 for his Oscar-winning performance in The French Connection, by the late Seventies, he was commanding $2 million for his role in Superman.

Gene Hackman’s personal life has been relatively serene by Hollywood standards, at least. In 1956 he married Faye Maltese, with whom he had three children; Christopher Allen, Elizabeth Jean, and Leslie Anne. The marriage lasted some thirty years, but hit a stormy patch in the late 1970s; the story goes that Gene turned down the lead part of Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977, because the film schedule involved 16 weeks of location shooting, and since he was having marital problems, he didn’t want to leave Los Angeles for such a long period. Gene and Faye finally divorced in 1986. Gene married his second wife, Betsy Arakawa in 1991.

Gene has also flexed his creative muscles as a writer, and has written two novels in conjunction with the underwater archaeologist, Daniel Lenihan, namely Wake Of The Perdido Star (1999) and Justice for None (2004).

Until he reached his seventies, Gene averaged two movies per year, but his film career has recently slowed down. In July 2004, Gene appeared on the Larry King show, and said that he had no film projects lined up and that he considered that his acting career was over; his last movie was called Welcome To Mooseport, which received unfavourable reviews from the critics. Gene continues to do sound voiceovers for TV commercials, such as Oppenheimer Funds, United Airlines and Lowe’s Home Improvements - and who knows, he may yet stage a movie comeback...