Although Gene Hackman, who died at age 95, was one of Hollywood’s most enduring and recognizable stars, it was nearly impossible to put him in a box. Over a five-decade career, he portrayed cops, villains and men of the cloth, in thrillers, comedies and superhero blockbusters.
His accolades included two Academy Awards and four Golden Globes, including, in 2003, the Cecil B. DeMille Award for outstanding contributions to entertainment.
Here are some of his most notable performances.
‘The French Connection’
Hackman’s breakout role was as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, a cop investigating a heroin deal in William Friedkin’s “The French Connection.” Hackman won the best actor Academy Award for this performance, and critics immediately recognized his star quality. Stephen Farber, reviewing the movie for The Times, said that Hackman had brought “a new kind of police hero” to the screen. His character was “brutal, racist, foulmouthed, petty, compulsive, lecherous,” Farber wrote, “but even at his most appalling, he is recognizably human.”
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‘The Poseidon Adventure’
Hackman followed up “The French Connection” with three movies in 1972, including “The Poseidon Adventure,” directed by Ronald Neame, about an ill-fated ocean liner’s final voyage. Hackman played a minister who leads the other frantic passengers to safety.
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‘The Conversation’
Hackman didn’t always see eye to eye with directors, including when working with Francis Ford Coppola on 1974’s “The Conversation” about a skilled surveillance expert whose natural paranoia shades into mania during the course of a difficult assignment. Hackman reportedly bristled at Coppola’s loose instructions and demands for more improvisation. Perhaps because of the actor’s confusion and frustration, Hackman gave what many critics have called his career-best performance as a man perpetually on edge, fumbling his way through everyday human interactions. The movie won the Palme d’Or, the top prize, at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival.
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‘Bonnie and Clyde’
Although Hackman’s breakthrough was with “The French Connection,” he had actually scored his first Oscar nomination years earlier with 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” a movie that kicked off American cinema’s “New Hollywood” era and introduced audiences to a wave of fresh faces and filmmakers with lofty aesthetic ambitions. Director Arthur Penn helped turn the true story of Depression-era fugitive bank robbers Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) into a lyrical, blood-spattered study of the American dream. Hackman played Clyde’s squarer older brother, Buck, and represented all the sturdy Midwesterners who couldn’t help but fall for the romance of outlaws.
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‘I Never Sang For My Father’
This 1970 version of the drama class staple garnered Hackman his second Oscar nomination. It was for best supporting actor, but the story is really all about Hackman’s character, Gene, a middle-aged man still afraid to stand up to his father and live his own life.
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Re-teaming with the “Bonnie and Clyde” director Arthur Penn, Hackman starred in this 1975 movie: one of the last great “New Hollywood” films, which arrived just before “Jaws” and “Star Wars” saw movie studios turn toward blockbusters. “Night Moves,” about a moody private eye working a missing-persons case, is stubbornly not a crowd-pleasing action flick. Hackman’s hero, Harry Moseby, is a loser and the case offers few satisfying payoffs. This is a movie about people going nowhere, slowly; and Hackman delivers a memorably lived-in performance as a detective mainly searching for his own elusive dignity.
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‘Superman’
In the 1970s, Hackman became known as one of Hollywood’s hardest-working actors, completing movies at a frenetic pace, as shown by his appearances in the “Superman” franchise. While filming his role as arch-villain Lex Luthor for the first installment, Hackman simultaneously shot his scenes for that movie’s sequel, “Superman II.”
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During the 1980s, Hackman starred in one of the great underdog sports dramas. Based on the true story of dinky Indiana high school that improbably competed for the state championship, “Hoosiers” draws as much of its power from its star’s performance as its feel-good story. Hackman is quietly commanding as a temperamental coach, who relies on his tactical mind and his ability to inspire unlikely heroes (including an alcoholic assistant coach played by an Oscar-nominated Dennis Hopper). The uplifting moments in “Hoosiers” are well-earned, spun from scenes that show how even the smart, talented, and well-intentioned can make bad choices, and then learn from them.
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‘Mississippi Burning’
Hackman’s major movie of the 1980s was “Mississippi Burning,” in which he portrayed an F.B.I. agent in 1960s Mississippi who uses violent tactics to help an investigation into the murder of three civil rights activists. Around its release, some civil rights experts criticized the movie for fictionalizing the real murder of three men, but many movie critics and fans praised Hackman’s “achingly plausible” performance, which led to his second best actor nomination.
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‘Unforgiven’
Hackman won his second Oscar — a best supporting actor award in 1993 — for “Unforgiven,” in which he played a sadistic small-town sheriff who comes up against a string of bounty hunters, including one played by Clint Eastwood. In The Times review of the film, Vincent Canby said that Hackman “delights” in the role, and he noted a shift for the performer: “No more Mr. Good Guy.”
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This pulse-pounding 1995 war picture derives much of its tension and drama from the way Hackman plays submarine captain Frank Ramsey, a man who puts his own instincts above protocol. When his sub is in the middle of a standoff with rogue Russians, Ramsey makes choices that concern his second-in-command (Denzel Washington), sparking a mutiny in which neither the insurgents nor the loyalists are entirely right or wrong.
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‘The Royal Tenenbaums’
Hackman also won acclaim playing in comedies. In 2001, he starred in Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” as a disbarred lawyer who tries to reconcile with his eccentric children. A.O. Scott, reviewing the movie for The Times, said that Hackman had “the amazing ability to register belligerence, tenderness, confusion and guile within the space of a few lines of dialogue. You never know where he’s going, but it always turns out to be exactly the right place.”
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‘Heist’
Not everything Hackman touched was gold. The 2001 film “Heist” flopped in its original theatrical run. Still, David Mamet’s typically tricky little crime thriller is enormously entertaining, with outstanding character turns from Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito, and Sam Rockwell. Hackman plays a smooth-talking master thief pulled out of retirement for one more caper. He delivers lines like, “You plan a good enough getaway, you could steal Ebbets Field,” in ways that make them sound wiser than the usual bad guy bluster.
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