Addio al grande, immenso, immortale GENE HACKMAN
From Deadline:
Actor Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa have been found dead at their home in Santa Fe, according to police in New Mexico.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza confirmed just after midnight Thursday local time that the couple had died, along with their dog.
In a previous statement, the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office had said the couple had been found on Wednesday afternoon.
“We do not believe foul play was a factor in their deaths however, exact cause of death has not been determined at this time,” read the statement.
Hackman and classical pianist Arakawa, 63, had been married since 1991.
The 95-year-old Hollywood legend won Oscars for The French Connection (1971) and Unforgiven (1992), and was Oscar-nominated for roles in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), I Never Sang for My Father (1970), and Mississippi Burning (1988).
Hackman was also celebrated for his portrayal of Lex Luthor in Superman (1978) and its sequel Superman II, with other credits including The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Scarecrow (1972), The Conversation (1974), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Under Fire (1983), Power (1986), Loose Cannons (1990), The Firm (1993), The Quick and the Dead (1995), The Birdcage (1996), Enemy of the State (1998), Behind Enemy Lines (2001), and Runaway Jury (2003).
He had not been in the public eye for more than two decades having retired from acting after starring in Welcome to Mooseport in 2004.
Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California in 1930 and held dreams of becoming an actor from an early age.
He had an unstable, peripatetic childhood with his father walking out on the family when he was a 13 years old after they had fallen on hard times and been forced to move in with his maternal grandparents in Danville, Illinois.
In interviews, the actor would often recall the difficult memory of his father waving from the car as he drove away.
At the age of 16, Hackman lied about his age and enlisted in the United States Marine Corp and went on to serve as a field-radio operator, spending time in Japan and China.
He was discharged in 1951. He studied journalism and television production at the University of Illinois, but dropped out and then headed to New York, where he struggled to make ends meet, with odd jobs.
Encouraged by his first wife Fay Maltese to pursue his acting dreams, the couple moved to California in the mid-1955s. There, he cut his acting teeth at the Pasadena Playhouse in California where he became friends with Dustin Hoffman.
Alongside stage work, he secured bit roles in the movie Mad Dog Coll as well as TV series such as Tallahassee 7000, Route 66 and Naked City.
Continuing to take small film and TV roles, Hackman also spent time on Broadway throughout the 1960s, securing his first credited role in Lilith, starring Jean Seberg and Warren Beatty, and also appeared in the long-running show Poor Richard (1964–65).
Hackman rose to prominence in the early 1970s after he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in I Never Sang For My Father and then achieved stardom for his Oscar-winning performance as tough-talking New York detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection in 1971.
Throughout the 1970s, Hackman was one of Hollywood’s most prolific and popular actors.
Highlights of that period include the 1973 Cannes d’Or winning comedy-drama Scarecrow, in which he and Al Pacino play two drifters who travel from California to Pittsburgh with dreams of setting up a business.
He was back in Cannes the following year with Francis Ford Coppola’s mystery thriller The Conversation, which also won the Palme d’Or. Hackman starred as a surveillance expert who faces a moral dilemma when he believes he has stumbled on a murder through secret recordings he made as part of his work.
This decade also saw Hackman take top billing in the Superman and Superman II movies, produced by Alexander and Ilya Salkind, as supervillain Lex Luthor, a role he would reprise in the 1987 sequel Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
Hackman was even more prolific in the 1980s, appearing alongside Barbra Streisand in All Night Long (1981) and supporting Warren Beatty in Reds (1981), Eureka (1983), Uncommon Valor (1983), Misunderstood (1984).
He won popular praise for his role as a high school basketball coach in Hoosiers (1986) and was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for Mississippi Burning (1988), in which he co-starred alongside Willem Dafoe as FBI agents investigating the disappearance of three civil rights activists in a small Mississippi town.
He was feted with the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival in 1989 for his performance in the film.
The 1990s was an equally fertile period, with the actor winning his second Oscar for his performance as evil sheriff Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s 1992 western Unforgiven.
That decade also saw Hackman co-star opposite Tom Cruise in law world drama The Firm, adapted from John Grisham’s eponymous novel. Hackman would star in a further two adaptations of Grisham novels, The Chamber (1996) and Runaway Jury (2003).
Other career highlights of the 1990s included Extreme Measures (1996), Absolute Power (1997) with Clint Eastwood, Twilight (1998) with Paul Newman, and Enemy of the State (1998) with Will Smith.
Hackman’s final active years as an actor included Under Suspicion (2000) with Morgan Freeman, Heartbreakers alongside Sigourney Weaver and Heist, in which he played an ageing leader of a ring of thieves, attempting to pull off one last big job ahead of retirement.
The star was celebrated right up until the end of his active career, achieving awards glory with Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), winning the Golden Globe for Best Actor for his performance as the head of the eccentric family.
His penultimate feature credit Runaway Jury, reunited him with old friend Hoffman, with the actor retiring after appearing in the political satire Welcome to Mooseport opposite Ray Romano.
Advised by his doctor to retire, Hackman lived a private life in Santa Fe with his wife, citing his activities as painting, fishing and writing, even taking co-writer credits on adventure novels ‘Justice For None’ and ‘Wake of Perdido Star’, with friend and underwater researcher Daniel Lenihan.
Hackman is survived by three children, Christopher, Elizabeth Jean and Leslie Anne, with late ex-wife, Maltese.
