Gene Hackmann

Eugene Allen Hackman (San Bernardino, California, January 30, 1930), better known as Gene Hackman, is an American actor and writer who has won two Oscars., four Golden Globes (including a Cecil B. DeMille Award) and two BAFTAs.

He got his start in film in the 1960s and rose to fame during the 1970s. He had leading roles in Hollywood films by directors such as Arthur Penn, William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola, Alan Parker and Mike Nichols, thus demonstrating his remarkable interpretative faculties.

Some of the films in which he has participated are: The French Connection (film with which he won his first Oscar for best actor), The Poseidon Adventure, The Conversation, Superman: The Movie, Under Fire, Hoosiers, Bat 21, Mississippi Burning, The Firm, Unforgiven (film for which he received his second Oscar, this time for best supporting actor), Fast and Deadly, Red Tide, Absolute Power, Heist, The Royal Tenenbaums, Behind Enemy Lines, Public Enemy, Runaway Jury, among others.

Early Years

His full name is Eugene Allen Hackman. He was born in San Bernardino, California, on January 30, 1930. He was the son of Eugene Ezra Hackman, an Orthodox Christian from Russia, and Lidya Gray Hackman, an Irish Catholic. Hackman is Catholic and was baptized in 1932. He has a brother, Richard, 12 years his junior. His parents divorced when he was still a child (in 1943), so he lived in various places until finally settling in with his grandmother, Beatrice, in Danville, Illinois, where his father worked. as a newspaper editor. At 16, lying about his age, he enlisted in the Marines, where he served for three years as a radio operator in China (until the triumph of the communist revolution in 1949), Hawaii, and Japan. Later he lived in New York, where he performed various menial jobs. He returned to Illinois to study television and journalism at college, taking advantage of government tuition aid for former military members. Later he studied at the School of Radio Technique in New York, which made it easier for him to work on radio stations in Florida and Illinois.

Career

Late vocation

After he turned 30, Hackman decided to be an actor and entered the Pasadena Playhouse acting school in Los Angeles. It was there that he forged a friendship with another promising actor, Dustin Hoffman. He did some work on television in series such as FBI or Los invaderos, and made his film debut with a small role in the gangster film Mad Dog Coll (1961), by Burt Balaban, in which his name did not even appear in the credits.^{[citation required]}

After some time, and after the accidental death of her mother in a fire in 1962, she returned to New York, where she studied with George Morrison and acted in various low-profile theaters, until in 1964 when she received her first offer for perform in a Broadway theater, the most prestigious theater area in New York. The success that she reaped opened the doors of the cinema for her. ^{[ citation needed ]}

That same year he worked as a supporting actor in the film Lilith, by Robert Rossen, with Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg, and later participated in some other films.^{[citation required ]}

Claim to fame

In 1967, Warren Beatty recommended him for the role of Clyde Barrow's brother in Bonnie and Clyde, directed by Arthur Penn, in which Beatty was the lead and producer. His compelling portrayal of Buck Barrow (particularly his chilling death scene) won over critics, and Hackman earned his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. His career took hold, and his film work continued in an unbroken line. During the same year he participated in the cult series The invaders together with Roy Thinnes, in the chapter & # 34; The spores & # 34; (12/06/17, Francisco Rizzo). In 1969, he worked with Robert Redford in the movie The Descent of Death. He was nominated once again for best supporting actor, in the film I Never Sang for My Father (1970), by Gilbert Cates, with Melvyn Douglas and Estelle Parsons.^{[quote required]}

In 1972 he received an Oscar for Best Lead Actor for his extraordinary performance in William Friedkin's The French Connection, playing "Popeye" Doyle.

In Ronald Neame's The Poseidon Adventure (1972) film, Hackman cemented his place as a character actor, playing the proverbial eccentric Reverend Scott who sacrificed his life in pursuit of some desperate passengers in a boat capsized at sea, received very good reviews from the specialized press. Also in this year he starred, along with Al Pacino, in the film Scarecrow by Jerry Schatzberg. Later, in 1974, he also starred in Francis Ford Coppola's hit film The Conversation. That same year he made an appearance in the film Young Frankenstein by Mel Brooks, where he played a blind hermit. In 1975 he worked again with Arthur Penn, in the thriller The Night Moves On, where Hackman played private detective Harry Moseby. He had several other performances, including the notable sequel to French Connection (French Connection II), March or Die, or The Adventurers of Lucky Lady and in 1978 he played the villain Lex Luthor in Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie, giving a brilliant interpretation of the character. Despite having a common appearance, Hackman has given his roles a very personal style and great credibility.

Later Years

Hackman in the 1960s.

After the 1970s, Hackman continued his film career, with films such as: two Superman sequels (Superman II and Superman IV), Reds (1981), directed by his friend and colleague Warren Beatty, in which he only made a small intervention, Under Fire (1983) by Roger Spottiswoode, Hoosiers (1986) by David Anspaugh, Another Woman (1987) by Woody Allen, Bat 21 (1988) by Peter Markle and Mississippi Burns (1989) by Alan Parker, for which he was again nominated for the Oscar for Best Leading Actor.

By the late 1980s, Hackman had become a great actor, highly respected by the profession and by the public. He was alternating supporting roles with leading roles, and even cameo appearances, always choosing the scripts carefully. His career was already established.

In 1990, he had to undergo heart surgery for a heart condition, from which he recovered satisfactorily, although this ailment kept him away from work for almost two years.

He won his second Oscar in 1992, this time for best supporting actor, for his portrayal of the sadistic sheriff in Unforgiven, a film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. This second statuette cemented his reputation with a new generation of viewers. In 1993 he appeared in the film The Firm by Sydney Pollack, alongside Tom Cruise. In 1995, he played John Herod, in the movie The Quick and the Dead (Fast and Deadly) with Sharon Stone, in the same year, he played Captain Frank Ramsey in the film Red Tide with Denzel Washington. He returned to the direction of Clint Eastwood in 1997, in the film Absolute Power . In 1998 he worked with Paul Newman in the film At Sunset , that same year he appeared in the film Public Enemy with Will Smith.

Recent Time

After so many years dedicated to acting, Hackman wanted to try another type of activity and wrote a novel, together with submariner Daniel Lenihan, which was published in 1999, entitled Wake of the Perdido Star, the year in which he did not appear in any film, a second novel by the actor was published in 2004, entitled Justice for None, and more recently, the one entitled Escape From Andersonville. Hackman also paints, flies airplanes and participates in car races. He is also an avid film collector.

After the 1990s, he appeared in several more films, such as Under Suspicion (2000), The Replacements (2000), Heist (2001), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Behind Enemy Lines (2001), Runaway Jury (2003), Bienvenido a Mooseport (2004) (this being, according to Hackman himself, the last film in which he will participate), among others, and which went on to swell the list of more than eighty films, which he has shot throughout of a fruitful career. Over the course of 40 years he has played a wide variety of characters, all of them convincingly. During this long period he has not only worked in the cinema, but also on television and in the theater.

Hackman turned down the leading roles in Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, Black Sunday, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Hunter, Network, The Silence of the Lambs and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. And he was a candidate to play the lawyer Tom Hagen in The Godfather , by Francis Ford Coppola, a role that he ended up playing Robert Duvall.

The lack of a physical stereotype is precisely one of the mainstays of his success that has allowed him not to be pigeonholed. Hackman gives his characters a profile that the audience immediately grasps with credibility. One of the highlights of Hackman that places him among the best actors of his generation is that there is no archetypal role that he can be identified with. Famous is his role in Hill 56 where he plays a colonel who fell behind the lines in Vietnam.

Among his awards we also find British film awards, four Golden Globes, the Best Actor Trophy at the Cannes Film Festival, two Awards from the National Association of Cinema Owners and a large number of awards from groups of critics as well. as retrospective titles from entities such as the British Film Institute, the San Francisco Film Festival and the American Film Institute.

On July 7, 2004, Hackman gave an interview to Larry King, in which he announced that he had no future projects, and that his acting career was probably over. In 2008, at the age of 78, he confirmed in a new interview that he was definitively and completely leaving the film industry, to fully delve into his literary career (because making films was already very stressful for him), started in the 90s. Many of Hackman's followers and colleagues (such as Clint Eastwood, a good personal friend and with whom he has worked) regretted the actor's decision, but above all they respected it. The actor values the freedom of the literary craft, in which only Lenihan's points of view and his own count, allowing more control over what he wants to say and do, unlike the multiple dependencies in the movie business.

Private life

Hackman has been married twice. His first marriage (to Fay Maltese) lasted 30 years (from 1956 to 1986) and ended in divorce. From this marriage Hackman has three children (Christopher Allen, Elizabeth Jean and Leslie Anne). In 1991 he married again, to Betsy Arakawa. He has lived with his second wife in Los Angeles and they currently live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Filmography

• Mad Dog Coll (1961)
• Lilith (1964)
• Hawaii (1966)
• First to Fight (1967) (1967)
• Out by the Country Club (1967)
• Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
• Banning (1967)
• A Covenant with Death (1967)
• The riot (1968)
• The cast (1968)
• Shadow on the Land (1968)
• The decline in death (1969)
• Caught in space (Marooned) (1969), by John Sturges
• The Gypsy MothsJohn Frankenheimer (1969)
• I Never Sang for My Father (1970)
• The French Connection (1971)
• Implacable hunt (1971)
• Hospital, hour zero (1971)
• Living flesh (1972)
• The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
• Scarecrow (1972)
• Cisko Pike (1972)
• Prime Cut (1972)
• The conversation (1974)
• Kill the bullet (1974)
• The wife bought (1974)
• The young Frankenstein (1974)
• French Connection II (1975)
• Lucky Lady (1975)
• Night Moves (1975)
• The Domino Principle (First-page presiding, 1977)
• A distant bridge (1977)
• March or die (1977)
• Superman (1978)
• Superman II (1980)
• Eureka (1981)
• Reds (1981)
• All Night Long (Night of nightmare1981)
• Such for which (1983)
• Beyond the value (1983)
• Under fire (1983)
• Misunderstood (1984)
• Elliot. (1984)
• Target (1985)
• Twice in life (1985)
• Hoosiers (1986)
• Power (1986)
• No exit. (1987)
• Another woman (1987)
• Superman IV (1987)
• Arde Mississippi (1988)
• The Package (1988)
• Full moon in blue water (1988)
• Bat 21 (1988)
• Split Decisions (1988)
• Postcards from the edge (1990)
• Accidental witness (1990)
• A shot at the cane (1990)
• Swords without borders (1991)
• Judicial action (1991)
• Without forgiveness (1992)
• Geronimo: An American Legend (1993)
• The Firm (1993)
• Wyatt Earp (1994)
• Get Shorty (1995)
• Red sea (1995)
• Quick and mortal (1995)
• Extreme Measures (1996)
• The Birdcage (1996)
• Sealed chamber (1997)
• Absolute power (1997)
• Enemy public (1998)
• As the sun falls (1998)
• Antz (1998) - Voice
• The Replacements (2000)
• Under suspicion (2000)
• Behind Enemy Lines (2001)
• The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
• Heist (2001)
• Heartbreakers (2001)
• The Mexican (2001)
• Runaway Jury (2003)
• Welcome to Mooseport (2004)

Awards

Oscar Awards

Golden Globes

BAFTA

Awards of the Union of Actors

CFCA

NBR

NYFCC

Berlin International Film Festival

KCFCC

LAFCA

Bronze Wrangler for Theatrical Motion Picture

NSFC