Gene Hackman, the Oscar-winning Everyman actor with an edge, dies at 95

(CNN) — Gene Hackman, the unpretentious actor whose performances in such films as “The French Connection,” “Hoosiers,” “Unforgiven” and “The Firm” elevated character roles to leading-man levels, has died. He was 95.

Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, were found dead in their home in New Mexico along with their dog, according to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.

Hackman’s best roles were often of conflicted authority figures or surprisingly clever white-collar villains. Many held a hint – sometimes more than a hint – of menace.

He won an Oscar for his portrayal of New York cop Popeye Doyle in 1971’s “The French Connection,” a detective who gets his man but at a high cost. His surveillance expert in 1974’s “The Conversation” is single-minded to the point of obsession, losing all perspective.

Even in 1986’s “Hoosiers,” in which Hackman played perhaps his most heroic role – a small-town high school basketball coach – he seems to revel in the man’s flaws.

Yet he was always watchable, even magnetic. His cackle alone, which film critic David Edelstein described as “that familiar, slightly sinister ‘heh-heh-heh,’” inspired a YouTube tribute.

“On one hand, he has the gravitas of the Lincoln Memorial. On the other hand, he has the physical forgettability of that middle-management guy in the seat next to you on the flight from Rochester to Omaha,” wrote Michael Hainey in a 2011 GQ article.

“I’d like to think that if an actor was playing me, that he would do me in an honest fashion. I always try to approach the work in that way, regardless of how good or bad the script,” he told GQ.

Perhaps it was his status as a late bloomer that made Hackman so conscious of the need to strip his roles of adornment.

He was 36 before he broke through in 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde” – a role he got after losing the part of Mr. Robinson in “The Graduate.” Before that, he’d served in the Marines, scuffled in California and New York (sometimes with a roommate, “Graduate” star Dustin Hoffman) and worked odd jobs, including truck driver and doorman.

Still, he was fine just with being an actor – regardless of how others viewed his un-movie star face.

“Neither Dustin nor myself looked like the leading men of that era, especially Dusty because he wasn’t tall,” he told Film Comment in 1988. “We were constantly told by acting teachers and casting directors that we were ‘character’ actors. The word ‘character’ denotes something less than attractive.

“I accepted the limitation of always being the third or fourth guy down, and my goals were tiny,” he continued. “But I still wanted to be an actor.”

His acting origins

In the beginning, Hackman was lucky to be anything.

He was born January 30, 1930, and grew up in Danville, Illinois. His parents divorced when he was an adolescent, and his father, a printing press operator, deserted the family.

Hackman, 13 at the time, could still see his father’s goodbye wave in an interview more than four decades later.

“I hadn’t realized how much one small gesture can mean,” he told Parade in 1989. “Maybe that’s why I became an actor.” The lack of a father, he added, gave him his hardworking drive; his mother, who had musical talent, and his infirm grandmother, who lived with the family, gave him a fondness for the arts.

“I was too young to be left alone, and she was too old to be left alone, so I became very close with her,” he said of the latter. “She was a great storyteller.”

He lied about his age to get into the Marines and served five years as a radio operator. He was brash and sometimes angry – he didn’t sugarcoat his attitude in interviews – and moved to Pasadena, California, in 1952 to take up acting.

While there, he fell in with Hoffman at the Pasadena Playhouse. The two were voted “least likely to succeed.”

That didn’t stop the pair, who moved to New York and became friends with a third struggling actor, Robert Duvall. Hoffman and Duvall became roommates; the three scavenged for parts.

Hackman starting getting breaks in 1964, first on Broadway with “Any Wednesday” and then in the movie “Lilith.” The lead in “Lilith” was Warren Beatty, and he didn’t forget his co-star, still climbing, when he was casting “Bonnie and Clyde” a couple years later.

Hackman’s performance as Clyde’s brother, Buck Barrow, brought him an Oscar nomination.

At this point, Hackman could have relaxed into a long television career: He was the first choice for the role of Mike Brady on “The Brady Bunch.” But a combination of factors – including Hackman’s decision to pursue challenging movie roles and a contract eventual “Brady” star Robert Reed had with its studio – prompted Hackman to take such roles as the no-nonsense coach in 1969’s “Downhill Racer” and the conflicted son in “I Never Sang for My Father.” The latter earned him his second Oscar nomination.

He wasn’t the first choice for Popeye Doyle, the combustible detective pursuing a heroin shipment in 1971’s “The French Connection.” According to Hackman, Robert Mitchum, Rod Taylor and New York newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin were all ahead of him.

Even after being cast, he had trouble with the role. An early scene had him punching a drug pusher, and Hackman found it difficult to do the violence.

“I felt terrible, and the scene was no good. That night, I told (director) Billy Friedkin he should consider replacing me,” he told Film Comment.

Friedkin didn’t, and Hackman eventually clicked. Indeed, he clicked so well, he won an Oscar for best actor. The film took home five Oscars, including best picture.

Memorable performances

His next film was a 180-degree turn: producer Irwin Allen’s all-star disaster epic, “The Poseidon Adventure.” Hackman played a mod priest who leads the trapped passengers of an overturned ocean liner to safety.

“When I was working on it, I was kind of ashamed of myself,” he told the UK Guardian. The film was a huge box-office success, anyway.

Hackman’s roles were usually pensive and dramatic, but he occasionally ventured away from his comfort zone for comedy. He was a blind hermit in a hilarious scene in Mel Brooks’ 1974 film “Young Frankenstein” and a scenery-chewing Lex Luthor in 1978’s “Superman” and its sequel.

Years later, Hackman gave an impulsive spark to Royal Tenenbaum, the patriarch of a neurotic clan in Wes Anderson’s 2001 film “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

Despite his talent, Hackman wasn’t always in great films. In interviews, he was as blunt about the successes (1981’s “Reds,” he said, was “difficult”) as the failures. “Hoosiers,” which became a classic, “passed him by,” he told GQ.

“I took the film at a time that I was desperate for money. I took it for all the wrong reasons, and it turned out to be one of those films that stick around,” he said. “I never expected the film to have the kind of legs it’s had.”

He was sometimes the best thing in bad films. “So many of his roles take (his reliability) for granted and do not think to test him,” wrote David Thomson in the “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.”

For his part, Hackman said, “I suppose a lot of it comes from early days when there wasn’t any work.”

But when he had the material, he was a champion. He won his second Oscar for his performance as Little Bill Daggett, the violent sheriff in Clint Eastwood’s 1992 best picture winner, “Unforgiven.” (It was another role he almost turned down, he told CNN.)

“Gene Hackman gives one of his most powerful and least mannered performances, displaying an implacable strength and controlled passion that form the essential counterbalance to Eastwood’s own considerable force,” wrote Kenneth Turan in The Los Angeles Times in 1992.

He was intimidating in 1993’s “The Firm,” amusing in 1995’s “Get Shorty” and stolid in 2000’s “The Replacements.” But with a handful of exceptions, the latter part of his career seemed to be a series of military men, villainous government officials and lawyers. His last film was inexplicable: the little-seen and poorly received 2004 comedy “Welcome to Mooseport.”

At 74, he quietly retired and stuck to it. He became a man of leisure in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and turned to other arts, painting and writing.

Another good role never came along. “I don’t have a project, Larry. If you have a script, I’ll read it,” he told Larry King in 2004, a few months after “Mooseport’s” release. “It’s probably all over.”

For Hackman, that was OK. He never saw himself as a leading man anyway.

“You’d like to (have) been fourth star in all those MGM movies?” King asked.

“Yes,” replied Hackman. “I would have liked to have done that.”

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