Gene Hackman

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Image:Hackman.JPG Eugene Alden Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is an Academy Award-winning American actor.

1 Early life
2 Career
3 Private life
4 Academy Awards and Nominations
5 Filmography
6 External links

Early life

Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California to Eugene Ezra Hackman (a newspaper pressman) and Lynda Gray. His parents divorced while he was a child, and he moved from one place to another until he settled finally in Danville, Illinois, where he lived with his English-born grandmother, Beatrice Gray.

At 16 he left home to join the Marines, where he served 3 years as a field radio operator. Having finished his service, he moved to New York, working in several minor jobs before moving to study television production and journalism at the University of Illinois under the G.I. Bill.

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Career

Already over 30 years old, Hackman decided to become an actor, and joined the Pasadena Playhouse in California. It was in that school that Hackman forged a friendship with another aspiring actor, Dustin Hoffman. Already seen as outsiders by their classmates, Hackman and Hoffman were later voted "The Least Likely To Succeed". Determined to prove them wrong, Hackman hopped on a bus bound for New York City with his wife. Hoffman later followed them. A 2004 article in Vanity Fair described how Hackman, Hoffman and Robert Duvall were all struggling actors and close friends while living in New York City in the 1960s. Hackman was working as a doorman when he ran into an instructor whom he had despised at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. Reinforcing "The Least Likely To Succeed" vote, the man had said "See Hackman, I told you you wouldn't amount to anything." (Some reports allege that it was one of his former drill instructors from the Marines who saw him there and told him this.)

Hackman began performing in several off-Broadway plays. Finally, in 1964, he had the offer to play on Broadway, which opened the doors to the movies. His first role was in Lilith, with Warren Beatty in the leading role. Another secondary role, Buck Barrow, in 1967's Bonnie and Clyde, earned him an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor. In 1971, he was again nominated for the same award, this time for I Never Sang for My Father, working alongside Melvyn Douglas and Estelle Parsons. The next year he won the Best Actor award for his memorable performance as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. He also appeared in the star studded war film A Bridge Too Far (1977).

By the end of the 1980s Hackman was a deeply respected actor (during the decade he made at least seventeen movies - see list below), and alternated between leading and supporting roles, earning another Best Actor nomination for Mississippi Burning. He was also an actor who, for a period in the mid-to-late 1980s, seemingly appeared in everything from the afformentioned lauded "Mississippi Burning" and "Hoosiers" to "Loose Cannons" and "Bat 21". In 1990, he underwent heart surgery, which kept him away from work for a while. In 1992, he played the sadistic sheriff, Bill Daggett, in Unforgiven, for which role he earned a second Oscar, this time for Best Supporting Actor. After so many years of acting, Hackman wanted to try another field of creativity, and wrote his first novel, which was published in 1999, a year that was exceptional in that he did not appear in any film.

His distinctive voice can be heard in television commercials from time-to-time, notably for United Airlines, GTE, CNN, and more recently for Oppenheimer Funds and Lowe's Home Improvement.

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Private life

Hackman's first wife was Fay Maltese. They had three children, but they divorced in 1986 after 30 years of marriage. In 1991, Hackman married Betsy Arakawa. They live in Beverly Hills and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Betsy is co-owner of an upscale retail home-furnishing store in Santa Fe, called Pandora's, Inc.

On July 7, 2004, Hackman gave a rare interview to Larry King, in which he announced that he had no future film projects lined up, and believes his acting career is finished.

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