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He has the reputation, for better or worse, of being "an everyman." Whatever that means.
He may be, more precisely, an enigma-man. A silent man who speaks through his characters. He's a curious mix. On one hand, he has the gravitas of the Lincoln Memorial. On the other hand, he has the physical forgettability of that middle-management guy in the seat next to you on the flight from Rochester to Omaha.
He grew up in Danville, Illinois. His father, Eugene Hackman, was a pressman for the local newspaper. His mother was a waitress. When Hackman was 13, his father abandoned the family. Hackman was out in the street, playing. His father passed him by, just giving a wave of his hand.
"I hadn't realized how much one small gesture can mean," he once said, looking back on it. "Maybe that's why I became an actor."
At 16, Hackman bluffed his way into the Marines. When he came out, at 19, he wound up in California and took classes at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he met another struggling nobody named Dusty Hoffman. Classmates voted both of them "least likely to succeed." They decided to go to New York, where they had another acting buddy they could run with: Robert Duvall. Picture the three of them roaming the city, hustling for parts all day, hitting the bars at night. (Will someone please make that movie?)
Hackman's mother died in 1962, before he hit it big. He rarely speaks about her death, but it has been reported that she was drinking, then passed out in bed with a lit cigarette, starting a fire that killed her.
His big break came in 1967 with Bonnie and Clyde. Oddly enough, he got the role of Buck Barrow after he'd been thrown off The Graduate, for which (at age 36) he had been cast to play Dustin Hoffman's potential father-in-law, Mr. Robinson. (Hoffman was 29.) Warren Beatty snatched him up, and Hackman went on to get an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Barrow. From then, he was off and running on a career that includes The French Connection (for which he won his first Oscar), The Conversation, Reds, Hoosiers, Mississippi Burning, Unforgiven (for which he won his second Oscar), and The Royal Tenenbaums.
And then there's Welcome to Mooseport, the movie that will be his last movie—unless Hackman changes his mind.
For now, he says he's retired, splitting his time between painting and writing.
Gene Hackman: I don't know. If I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything and just one or two people.
Well, that's very kind.
[laughs] Well...
There was a kind of energy about him, and he was totally different from anyone I'd ever seen in my life. Having been brought up in the Midwest, I didn't know those New York people. I thought he was terrific. Everything he did had a life to it. He was a bad guy in most of the films, and yet there was something lovable about him and creative.
Probably. I hate that idea, because it's the antithesis of the creative spirit and what it takes to be a creative person. But you do, sometimes, what happens in the spur of the moment. I, unfortunately, kind of react.
A real punch? I suppose it's been ten years.
A person. It was silly. It was that traffic thing. [In 2001, when he was 71, Hackman had a fender bender in Hollywood. He got out to inspect the damage to his car, and next thing you know, he takes a swing at the guy and has him on the pavement.]
She did say that. I would have been 10. Things parents say to children are oftentimes not heard, but in some cases you pick up on things that your parent would like to see you have done. Unfortunately my mom never saw me act, so I'm sorry for that, but that's the way it is.
I Never Sang for My Father. I thought it was a sensitive picture about family and relationships, and I think she would have been proud and happy to see that. You're fortunate sometimes to be able to do something in life that defines who you are and who your parents may have wanted you to be.
Yeah, they tell you not to write about your mom in books, but I don't know how you keep from doing that.
I had a troubled youth. [laughs] Any lines, or any comfort, direction, or things of that nature, would've come from my mother. She and my grandmother were important.
My grandmother was somewhat infirm when I was 10 or 12, and we all lived in the same house, so when my mother and father were out hanging wallpaper, or whatever they were doing as an extra job, my grandmother and I babysat each other. I was too young to be left alone, and she was too old to be left alone, so I became very close with her. She was a great storyteller.
Robert Jordan [For Whom the Bell Tolls]. I like Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo—having been able to keep that terrible vengeance in his soul for so many years and then carrying out what he thought were justified events in the end. I like that as a novel. As a human being, that's not the healthiest thing.
I was terrified of the basement. I forced myself to go there and make a place where I felt safe. Of course, that was the spot where my dad took me to dole out the punishment if I'd been rude to him. There was a variety of junk, and I made myself a haven. Silly... But it was my space.
I don't think so. You go through stages in your career that you feel very good about yourself. Then you feel awful, like, Why didn't I choose something else? But overall I'm pretty satisfied that I made the right choice when I decided to be an actor. I was lucky to find a few things that I could do well as an actor and that I could look at and say, "Yeah, that's all right."
He wanted Brando for that part. But it's not too bad to be second to Brando. [laughs] We rehearsed—normally you don't get a lot of rehearsal in films. We took advantage of Francis having some juice, because he'd just finished The Godfather. It was a good experience, because he's such a confident filmmaker. It was great because it was about something. It was about paranoia, the whole idea of eavesdropping. He's a very hands-on director, but after rehearsal he left me alone. But you knew what was required of you. Most directors, if sensitive at all and think an actor knows what he's doing in a film, have the good sense to leave him alone, and he did that.
That's a tough one. Almost anything one would say would sound egotistical. [pauses] I'd like to think that if an actor was playing me, that he would do me in an honest fashion. I always try to approach the work in that way, regardless of how good or bad the script. When I say "honest," I say to portray what is on the page, instead of what maybe people might think of me or what I would like them to think of me in terms of personality or charisma. But just be what is asked of me on the page.
Well, that's where the clue is to any creative process, to be able to figure out what is already there. Not to try to embellish.
Yes, but what's there comes first.
We filmed that fairly early on. That was one of the clues to the character to me. That piece of behavior helped me with the rest of the film.
Intimidation. Anybody who intimidates me, regardless of how they do it.
Dusty has a way of embellishing. His dad came to visit, and Dusty wanted me to meet him, and later Dusty said, "After you left, my dad said to me, 'Who's that guy? A truck driver?'" [laughs] Actually I was driving a truck at the time, a moving van.
Yeah, so he nailed me pretty good on that. I never really went out looking for trouble with people. If you go out enough at night...
Exactly. You will have some history.
Advice to my son. [pauses] I lost touch with my son in terms of advice early on. Maybe it had to do with being gone so much, doing location films when he was at an age where he needed support and guidance. It was very tough for me to be gone for three months and then come home and start bossing him around.
As a decent actor. As someone who tried to portray what was given to them in an honest fashion. I don't know, beyond that. I don't think about that often, to be honest. I'm at an age where I should think about it. [laughs]
Difficult.
Great fun.
Passed me by.
I took the film at a time that I was desperate for money. I took it for all the wrong reasons, and it turned out to be one of those films that stick around. I was from that area of the country and knew of that event, strangely enough. We filmed fifty miles from where I was brought up. So it was a bizarre feeling. I never expected the film to have the kind of legs it's had.
You know, I'm not sure; I don't have any memorabilia around the house. There isn't any movie stuff except a poster downstairs next to the pool table of Errol Flynn from Dawn Patrol. I'm not a sentimental guy.
Yeah. It all just kind of peels off....
"He tried." I think that'd be fairly accurate.