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Actor Gene Hackman, prolific Oscar winner, found dead at home at 95 years old

Published

1 year ago

February 27, 2025

Actor Gene Hackman, prolific Oscar winner, found dead at home at 95 years old

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Gene Hackman, the prolific Oscar-winning actor whose studied portraits ranged from reluctant heroes to conniving villains and made him one of the industry’s most respected and honored performers, has been found dead along with his wife at their home. He was 95.

Hackman was a frequent and versatile presence on screen from the 1960s into the 20th century. His dozens of films included the Academy Award favorites “The French Connection” and “Unforgiven,” a breakout performance in “Bonnie and Clyde,” a classic bit of farce in “Young Frankenstein” and featured parts in “Reds” and “No Way Out.” He seemed capable of any kind of role — whether an uptight buffoon in “Birdcage,” a college coach finding redemption in the sentimental favorite “Hoosiers” or a secretive surveillance expert in the Watergate-era release “The Conversation.”

Although self-effacing and unfashionable, Hackman held special status within Hollywood — heir to Spencer Tracy as an every man, actor’s actor, curmudgeon and reluctant celebrity. He embodied the ethos of doing his job, doing it very well, and letting others worry about his image. Beyond the obligatory appearances at awards ceremonies, he was rarely seen on the social circuit and made no secret of his disdain for the business side of show business.

“Actors tend to be shy people,” he told Film Comment in 1988. “There is perhaps a component of hostility in that shyness, and to reach a point where you don’t deal with others in a hostile or angry way, you choose this medium for yourself … Then you can express yourself and get this wonderful feedback.”

He was an early retiree — essentially done, by choice, with movies by his mid-70s — and a late bloomer. Hackman was 35 when cast for “Bonnie and Clyde” and past 40 when he won his first Oscar, as the rules-bending New York City detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in the 1971 thriller about tracking down Manhattan drug smugglers, “The French Connection.”

Jackie Gleason, Steve McQueen and Peter Boyle were among the actors considered for Doyle. Hackman was a minor star at the time, seemingly without the flamboyant personality that the role demanded. The actor himself feared that he was miscast. A couple of weeks of nighttime patrols of Harlem in police cars helped reassure him.

One of the first scenes of “The French Connection” required Hackman to slap around a suspect. The actor realized he had failed to achieve the intensity that the scene required, and asked director William Friedkin for another chance. The scene was filmed at the end of the shooting, by which time Hackman had immersed himself in the loose-cannon character of Popeye Doyle. Friedkin would recall needing 37 takes to get the scene right.

“I had to arouse an anger in Gene that was lying dormant, I felt, within him — that he was sort of ashamed of and didn’t really want to revisit,” Friedkin told the Los Angeles Review of Books in 2012.

The most famous sequence was dangerously realistic: A car chase in which Det. Doyle speeds under elevated subway tracks, his brown Pontiac (driven by a stuntman) screeching into areas that the filmmakers had not received permits for. When Doyle crashes into a white Ford, it wasn’t a stuntman driving the other car, but a New York City resident who didn’t know a movie was being made.

Hackman also resisted the role which brought him his second Oscar. When Clint Eastwood first offered him Little Bill Daggett, the corrupt town boss in “Unforgiven,” Hackman turned it down. But he realized that Eastwood was planning to make a different kind of western, a critique, not a celebration of violence. The film won him the Academy Award as best supporting actor of 1992.

“To his credit, and my joy, he talked me into it,” Hackman said of Eastwood during an interview with the American Film Institute.

Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, and grew up in Danville, Illinois, where his father worked as a pressman for the Commercial-News. His parents fought repeatedly, and his father often used his fists on Gene to take out his rage. The boy found refuge in movie houses, identifying with such screen rebels as Errol Flynn and James Cagney as his role models.

When Gene was 13, his father waved goodbye and drove off, never to return. The abandonment was a lasting injury to Gene. His mother had become an alcoholic and was constantly at odds with her mother, with whom the shattered family lived (Gene had a younger brother, actor Richard Hackman). At 16, he “suddenly got the itch to get out.” Lying about his age, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines. In his early 30s, before his film career took off, his mother died in a fire started by her own cigarette.

“Dysfunctional families have sired a lot of pretty good actors,” he observed ironically during a 2001 interview with The New York Times.

His brawling and resistance to authority led to his being demoted from corporal three times. His taste of show business came when he conquered his mic fright and became disc jockey and news announcer on his unit’s radio station.

With a high school degree he earned during his time as a Marine, Hackman enrolled in journalism at the University of Illinois. He dropped out after six months to study radio announcing in New York. After working at stations in Florida and his hometown of Danville, he returned to New York to study painting at the Art Students League. Hackman switched again to enter an acting course at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Back in New York, he found work as a doorman and truck driver among other jobs waiting for a break as an actor, sweating it out with such fellow hopefuls as Robert Duvall and Dustin Hoffman. Summer work at a theater on Long Island led to roles off-Broadway. Hackman began attracting attention from Broadway producers, and he received good notices in such plays as “Any Wednesday,” with Sandy Dennis, and “Poor Richard,” with Alan Bates.

During a tryout in New Haven for another play, Hackman was seen by film director Robert Rossen, who hired him for a brief role in “Lilith,” which starred Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg. He played small roles in other films, including “Hawaii,” and leads in television dramas of the early 1960s such as “The Defenders” and “Naked City.”

When Beatty began work on “Bonnie and Clyde,” which he produced and starred in, he remembered Hackman and cast him as bank robber Clyde Barrow’s outgoing brother. Pauline Kael in the New Yorker called Hackman’s work “a beautifully controlled performance, the best in the film,” and he was nominated for an Academy Award as supporting actor.

Hackman nearly appeared in another immortal film of 1967, “The Graduate.” He was supposed to play the cuckolded husband of Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), but director Mike Nichols decided he was too young and replaced him with Murray Hamilton. Two years later, he was considered for what became one of television’s most famous roles, patriarch Mike Brady of “The Brady Bunch.” Producer Sherwood Schwartz wanted Hackman to audition, but network executives thought he was too obscure. (The part went to Robert Reed).

Hackman’s first starring film role came in 1970 with “I Never Sang for My Father,” as a man struggling to deal with a failed relationship with his dying father, Melvyn Douglas. Because of Hackman’s distress over his own father, he resisted connecting to the role.

In his 2001 Times interview, he recalled: “Douglas told me, `Gene, you’ll never get what you want with the way you’re acting.’ And he didn’t mean acting; he meant I was not behaving myself. He taught me not to use my reservations as an excuse for not doing the job.” Even though he had the central part, Hackman was Oscar-nominated as supporting actor and Douglas as lead. The following year he won the Oscar as best actor for “The French Connection.”

Through the years, Hackman kept working, in pictures good and bad. For a time he seemed to be in a contest with Michael Caine for the world’s busiest Oscar winner. In 2001 alone, he appeared in “The Mexican,” “Heartbreakers,” “Heist,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “Behind Enemy Lines.” But by 2004, he was openly talking about retirement, telling Larry King he had no projects lined up. His only credit in recent years was narrating a Smithsonian Channel documentary, “The Unknown Flag Raiser of Iwo Jima.”

In 1956, Hackman married Fay Maltese, a bank teller he had met at a YMCA dance in New York. They had a son, Christopher, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Leslie, but divorced in the mid-1980s. In 1991 he married Betsy Arakawa, a classical pianist.

When not on film locations, Hackman enjoyed painting, stunt flying, stock car racing and deep sea diving. In his latter years, he wrote novels and lived on his ranch in Sante Fe, New Mexico, on a hilltop looking out on the Colorado Rockies, a view he preferred to his films that popped up on television.

“I’ll watch maybe five minutes of it,” he once told Time magazine, “and I’ll get this icky feeling, and I turn the channel.”

___

Bob Thomas, a longtime Associated Press journalist who died in 2014, compiled biographical material for this obituary.

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World

‘Sherlock’ Creator Steven Moffat and Producer Sue Vertue on New Show ‘Number 10’: A ‘Workplace Comedy Drama in the Most Ridiculous Workplace’

Published

7 hours ago

March 23, 2026

Press Room

‘Sherlock’ Creator Steven Moffat and Producer Sue Vertue on New Show ‘Number 10’: A ‘Workplace Comedy Drama in the Most Ridiculous Workplace’

‘Sherlock‘ producer Sue Vertue and co-creator Steven Moffat talked at Series Mania about their new political show “Number 10,” written by Moffat for Channel 4/ITVS.

“[It’s about] British government, we don’t know which party is in power. You have no idea. But, as I discovered in my research, it really makes no difference,” says Moffat.

“It’s not a satire. Whatever the disastrous outcome, for most part, these people are trying to get a good outcome. It’s funny and quite serious at times. I did an awful lot of research, which was usual for me, and got so many great stories about what goes on in this house. Yeah, I know they are politicians, but every proper sensible country governs from mighty buildings and castles. We got a wee street!”

“If you want to look at British self-image and what we are like as a nation, go to Downing Street. This little street. That’s us. That’s how we are. Inside, the toilets don’t often work, the lift breaks down, and in the room where they held the most important meetings, there is a sword – if everyone moves it, they’ve broken a terrible law. You will find out why if you watch the show.”

The politics has very little to do with the show, he states. Even though it was filmed on the actual Downing Street.

“As one character says, quoting a real-life Prime Minister: ‘Most of this job is trying to choose between two unacceptable outcomes.’ That’s pure drama. That’s glorious. ‘Which one of these should I chose?’ ‘It’s up to you, Prime Minister.’ ‘But they are both terrible? ‘Yes, Prime Minister.’ ‘I will be blamed for it, won’t I?’ ‘You will, Prime Minister.’ ‘Is more data coming in? Can we wait for it?’ ‘Yes, Prime Minister. No, Prime Minister.’”

“Think of it as a workplace comedy drama – in the most ridiculous workplace. The one where if you have an accidental hookup at a Christmas party, it’s going on the front page. If you have a serious hangover, you can start a war. It’s a place of high drama, sometimes high principle, but staffed by just people,” he notes.

“A lot of the stories are true. I’ve disguised the names to protect the guilty, but tons of it actually happens. It’s not about politics, because while making this show, any notion of having a political orientation went out of the window. I learnt too much. You are in a state of continuous crisis. What a perfect place to put a bunch of interesting characters in for a comedy drama.”

Vertue adds: “We are so proud of this show. We finished filming on Friday. It’s beautiful.”

A longtime couple in work and in life also talked about their partnership that spawned “Dracula” or “Sherlock” during the masterclass.

They spotted Cumberbatch in “Atonement,” where “he played a really creepy character. But he looked and sounded the part,” says Moffat.

“He had his demeanor. The BBC said: ‘He’s brilliant, just one thing: You did promise us a sexy Sherlock Holmes and he’s not, is he?’

Before Martin Freeman was cast, Matt Smith – Eleventh Doctor in “Doctor Who” – was one of the first people to audition for the role.

“Martin was a bit grumpy and we didn’t think he wanted the part. Then his agent called me: ‘No, he did, but he just had his wallet stolen’,” recalled Vertue, with Moffat adding: “They are both brilliant but I don’t know if they are ever more brilliant than when they are together.”

When they first met, Vertue was a “bigger name,” says Moffat.

“I don’t know, I guess making things like ‘Mr. Bean’ makes you famous. When we met, she was way out of my league. People ask: ‘Is it a problem, working with your wife?’ Well, raising children together is hard, too. If working together is ‘hard,’ what the hell are you doing getting married?!”

He adds: “Also, we are saving production money – we only need one hotel room.”

How did they fall in love?

“In a bar,” deadpans Vertue.

Or, rather, at the Edinburg TV festival.

“You know when you know immediately when it’s right? We did. I promised another producer not to work with him for a year, kept my promise and then I nabbed him,” she says.

They also worked together on “Coupling,” which was close to their own story, they admit.

“Whatever you write, even nonsense like ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Sherlock,’ you write what’s in front of you. I went from being a single man to being a married man. I lived in a different place; I was ‘a couple’. The rules had to be rewritten: ‘Stop flirting with women’ – that was one,” says Moffat.

“How autobiographical [was it]? Not very. Every journalist would ask: ‘Are any characters based on you and Sue?’ ‘Yes, those with our names. You are never gonna crack Watergate, are you?’ But yes, there’s some truth in it.”

“[After we met] we said: ‘Shall we be exclusive?’ I said: ‘I just have to go and dump someone.’ Sue was dumping people for about a month, and it was so easy for her! Once someone called, she picked up and said: ‘Oh hi! Sorry, I met someone. Bye’.”

According to Moffat, “if it’s boring, stick some jokes in it.”

“Real life is funny – drama is a lie. If you are saying goodbye to the love of your life, you can’t wait for her to leave because you have to pee. These Sherlock stories? If you read the original, it’s funny. Holmes is a funny guy, making impossible deductions and Watson still managing to be astonished by it. It’s glorious stuff. [‘Sherlock’ episode] ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ is one of my favorite things and it’s non-stop gags. You can’t be too funny, too sexy or too pretty. Always go for funny.”

He adds: “Humor is truth on speed, that’s what it is. It’s insight with velocity. We had a tradition: When Sue reads a script, I move very far from her in case I want to ask: ‘Why haven’t you laughed yet?’ People must laugh when they read the script. You must laugh before you write a line. I used to say about comedy writing: Stare at the window until you make yourself laugh, and when you do, write it down.”

Vertue says: “He does all the voices and all the parts, and he’s laughing while walking down the street. Our son would say to his friends when they were coming over: ‘Don’t worry about my dad. He’s not mad, he’s just writing’.”

Sally Mais

World

UK counterterrorism police probe antisemitic arson attack as Iran-linked group claims responsibility

Published

9 hours ago

March 23, 2026

Press Room

UK counterterrorism police probe antisemitic arson attack as Iran-linked group claims responsibility

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Counterterrorism police are leading an investigation after four Jewish community ambulances were set on fire outside a synagogue in London early Monday in what authorities are treating as an antisemitic hate crime.

The attack took place around 1:45 a.m. in the Golders Green neighborhood, where Hatzola ambulances, a volunteer emergency service run by the Jewish community, were deliberately set ablaze in a synagogue parking lot, according to a statement by Detective Chief Superintendent Luke Williams of the Metropolitan Police.

“This arson attack is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime. This is a devastating incident for our Jewish communities,” Williams said. He added that while the incident has not yet been formally declared terrorism, “the investigation is now being led by Counterterrorism Policing… and all lines of enquiry remain open.”

A video circulating online purports to show Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya, an Iran-linked group that has claimed responsibility for recent attacks on Jewish sites in Belgium and the Netherlands, taking credit for the London attack, according to the Jewish Chronicle.

WESTERN LEADERS MUST CONFRONT ISLAMIST-INSPIRED ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE BEFORE IT TARGETS EVERYONE

Charred remains of ambulances belonging to Hatzola, a Jewish community organization, which were set on fire in an incident that the police say is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime, in northwest London, Britain, March 23, 2026. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)

Authorities are examining a potential link to a newly emerged group with suspected ties to Iran. “We are aware of an online claim from a group taking responsibility for this attack,” Williams said. “Establishing the authenticity and accuracy of this claim will be a priority… but it is not something we can confirm at this point.”

Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital that the attack reflects years of policy failures in confronting Iranian activity on British soil. “Successive U.K. Governments have completely failed in their primary duty of keeping the home front safe. Iranian terrorist activity has been known about in the U.K. for years yet no significant moves have been made to ban the IRGC or restrict the ability of regime-linked entities to function within British society. We have created the conditions for terrorism to flourish,” he said.

He argued that Britain’s broader approach to the conflict with Iran — attempting to maintain distance while avoiding direct confrontation — has further emboldened Tehran. “The current policy on the war in Iran is delusional. The Government is pretending Britain is not involved. The Iranian regime does not, however, believe in neutrality and has decided its position for us: ripe for targeting.”

Joe Truzman, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said in a post on X that “My initial assessment is that the attack could potentially be linked to Ashab al-Yamin, an Iran-linked group that has carried out multiple attacks against Jewish institutions across Europe since the war began… Hopefully this is something different, but the possibility that the group is involved should be examined.”

ISRAEL’S NETANYAHU DEMANDS WESTERN GOVERNMENTS ACT TO BATTLE ANTISEMITISM: ‘HEED OUR WARNINGS’

Police said they are searching for three suspects seen on CCTV pouring an accelerant onto the vehicles before igniting them. No injuries were reported, though nearby homes were evacuated as a precaution.

The attack comes amid a broader wave of violence targeting Jewish communities across Europe in recent weeks.

Scott Saunders, CEO of the International March of the Living, said the incident represents a dangerous escalation. “The arson attack in Golders Green… marks a dangerous escalation in the targeting of Jewish communities,” Saunders said. “Emergency vehicles operated by Jewish volunteer first responders were deliberately attacked… in direct proximity to a place of worship — a space that should represent safety.”

CANADA’S CARNEY UNDER PRESSURE TO ACT AFTER SYNAGOGUES SHOT AT IN LATEST ANTISEMITIC INCIDENTS

Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel visits the scene after four ambulances belonging to Hatzola, a Jewish community organization, were set on fire in an incident that the police say is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime, in northwest London, Britain, March 23, 2026. (Isabel Infantes/Reuters)

“These ambulances do not only serve Jewish communities… Targeting them is an attack not only on Jewish life, but on the shared fabric of the community they serve,” he added. “Since the war with Iran began, antisemitic attacks have become more frequent, more brazen, and more direct. Jewish institutions are being singled out; synagogues, community spaces, and now even the emergency services that exist to protect Jewish lives, with a growing sense that these are legitimate targets. Following the deadly shooting in and around a synagogue in Manchester last October, where this escalation already resulted in loss of life, the attack in Golders Green makes clear that this trajectory is continuing.”

Dr. Charles Asher Small, founder of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, said the attack reflects a broader trend.

“The attack against a visible Jewish target is not an isolated act of vandalism; it is the violent fruition of a climate where Jew-hatred has been normalized and institutionalized,” Small said.

ISRAELI INTEL OFFICIAL SAYS YOUR ‘JAW WOULD DROP’ AT TERROR PLOTS PREVENTED WORLDWIDE

Men hold the flag of Israel and the pre-Iranian Revolution “Lion and Sun” flag near the scene where four ambulances belonging to Hatzola, a Jewish community organization, were set on fire in an incident that the police say is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime, in northwest London, Britain, March 23, 2026. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes (Isabel Infantes/Reuters)

“At the center of this malignancy sits the Iranian regime… which actively funds and directs the networks that view British Jewish institutions as legitimate targets,” he added.

British officials also condemned the attack.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, “An attack on our Jewish community is an attack on us all. We will fight the poison that is antisemitism.”

Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis called the incident on X “a particularly sickening assault — not only on the Jewish community, but on the values we share as a society.”

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Police secure the site near a synagogue damaged by an explosion early on Monday, in Liege, Belgium, March 9, 2026. (Yves Herman/Reuters)

“The targeting of Hatzola… is a most painful illustration of the ongoing battle between those who sanctify life and those who seek to destroy it,” he added in a statement posted March 23, 2026.

Police said there have been no arrests and urged anyone with information to come forward.

Efrat Lachter is a foreign correspondent for Fox News Digital covering international affairs and the United Nations. Follow her on X @efratlachter. Stories can be sent to efrat.lachter@fox.com.

World

How the Iran war is about to hit your wallet

Published

10 hours ago

March 23, 2026

Press Room

How the Iran war is about to hit your wallet

Strikes on gas sites in the Iran war are driving up energy costs, pushing up prices for power, food and more worldwide.

Strikes on gas sites are now part of the US-Israel war with Iran. But its effect will echo far beyond the Gulf, hitting power, food, and prices worldwide. As gas supply shrinks and costs rise, who will feel it most, and how far could the shock spread?

In this episode:

Justin Dargin (@justindargin), Energy Expert, Middle East Council on Global Affairs

Episode credits:

This episode was produced by Marcos Bartolomé, Tamara Khandaker, Sarí el-Khalili, Chloe K. Li, Tuleen Barakat, Catherine Nouhan and our guest host, Kevin Hirten. It was edited by Sarí el-Khalili. Alex Roldan is our sound designer.

The Take production team is Marcos Bartolomé, Sonia Bhagat, Spencer Cline, Sarí el-Khalili, Tamara Khandaker, Chloe K. Li, Alexandra Locke, Catherine Nouhan, Alex Roldan, and Noor Wazwaz. Our host is Malika Bilal.

Our editorial intern is Tuleen Barakat. Our engagement producers are Adam Abou-Gad and Vienna Maglio. Andrew Greiner is lead of audience engagement. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer.

Connect with us:

@AJEPodcasts on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

Published On 23 Mar 2026