News has broken that Gene Hackman, his wife Betsy, and their dog have tragically passed away in their New Mexico home. A two-time Academy Award winner, Hackman was among the finest actors to ever live, leaving behind a career of leading roles such as Superman, Unforgiven, Night Moves, and Downhill Racer. Yet, in a career littered with memorable performances, his finest was his 1971 breakout with legendary director William Friedkin. Yet, the role almost wasn’t is.
Dustin Hoffman, fellow two-time Academy Award winner and Hackman’s co-star in Runaway Jury, once said that when the two were in film school together, Hackman was already so natural that nobody believed he was acting. When New Hollywood came knocking looking for new stars, they were led to a trio of roommates in Hackman, Hoffman, and Robert Duvall, and all three became Hollywood royalty due to a certain level authenticity most actors can’t find. William Friedkin and a connection was everything needed to deliver an iconic movie where Hackman played a narcotics detective that brings down a heroin operation. It sounds like an ideal fit: an unknown star that America hasn’t painted in yet becoming the next big star in an original crime thriller to ring in a new era of film. Friedkin, however, had to be convinced. Originally, Friedkin had written the role with Paul Newman in mind, though, on a budget of under $2M, Newman was immediately priced out of the role. Peter Boyle turned the role down, and Steve McQueen had refused to play another cop with how recent Bullitt had been released. Enter: Hackman.
An everyman who feels brought to his knees by what has become of ’70s Manhattan, Hackman’s Jimmy Doyle is a perfect encapsulation of the anti-hero that was commonplace in ’70s cinema. Doyle wasn’t moral, yet every awful thing he did had a purpose rooted in an essence of morality. For as stereotypical a cop as Hackman is, on the surface a brutal racist, there’s still an innate sense of humanization at his core that makes an audience gravitate toward him, and in a film led by the anti-hero, that’s a tightrope that a film rests on. The audience needs somebody to root for, even if they’re disgusting at the same time. Of course, this is the kind of character Hackman would play at different levels. This one is just a smidge better than the rest. Hackman’s grittiness matches the grittiness of ’70s New York, and the lack of overt exposition allows for the visuals to tell the story in a way where the audience can naturally color it in for themselves, fostering an environment that you don’t even realize has sucked you in until the lone gunshot fades to black.
There’s a delicate balance for an inexperienced actor to find in such a vile lead character. A character that is irredeemable to a fault isn’t the typical character to carry a film, forcing an actor to sink or swim in the moment. Hackman not only answered the call, but the film won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor.
Gene Hackman’s everyman appeal was versatile. For every Unforgiven performance of a ruthless gunslinger, there’s a Mississippi Burning where he gets the bad guys and smooth talks Frances McDormand. For every egotistical narcissist that doesn’t get his comeuppance a la The Royal Tenenbaums, there’s the broken man solemnly playing his saxophone alone from everything he did in The Conversation. His characters may have had similar tendencies, but they each had a different motivation, different characterization, and different destinies.
Hackman didn’t get his Bonnie and Clyde role until 36, retired at 74, and had 20 years to enjoy the life he’d made chasing his dream later than most. Hackman worked with the greatest directors in arguably the most memorable era of Hollywood, starred in five Best Picture nominees, and established himself as one of Hollywood’s most reliable thespians while portraying characters that ranged from perhaps the most devious villain in comic books to tobacco tycoons addicted to their own product. Hackman never played a character that wasn’t flawed, and there’s an authenticity in that in which everybody can relate to.
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