Gene Hackman was a road digger voted ‘least likely to...

Gene Hackman was the real deal. He was as tough and as grizzly as he looked. He lied about his age to join the army at just 16 and developed a brutal approach to an acting career. “It was me against them,” he told me. “I took the view that I would do anything to get a part and to prove myself in it. I had no time for Hollywood, parties and pretending to love everyone I worked with.”.

Image Credit: The Sun [Gene Hackman at the Henry Mancini Institute's 10th Anniversary Gala.]

Hackman took a similar approach to the blunt announcement that he was retiring from acting at 74 on health grounds. It obviously paid off, because he lived for another 21 years and turned to writing novels, painting and fishing at his isolated ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico before he died at the age of 95.

Image Credit: The Sun [Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, at the Golden Globe Awards.]

He was found dead along with his second wife Betsy Arakawa, 32 years his junior and their dog at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Although their cause of death has not been revealed, cops have said that foul play is not suspected. He is survived by his three children from his first marriage to wife Faye, Christopher (born February,1960), Elizabeth (born August, 1962) and Leslie (born October, 1966).

Image Credit: The Sun [Gene Hackman and his wife leaving a restaurant.]

He became one of the world’s biggest film stars without the good looks and style of his contemporaries. “I try to become the guy I am playing,” he said simply. “I’m not a personality actor.”. It brought him huge success, with a best actor Oscar for playing the obsessive and intolerant detective Jimmy ‘PopEye’ Doyle in the thrilling 1971 film The French Connection.

Image Credit: The Sun [Gene Hackman at age 16.]

He also won another Oscar as best supporting actor for his role as the ominously smiling ‘Little’ Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s gritty Western film Unforgiven in 1992. Yet his emergence to star status is one of Hollywood’s unlikeliest of success stories. He was nearly 30 before he became an actor and suffered from crippling shyness on stage.

Image Credit: The Sun [Black and white photo of Gene Hackman in the U.S. Marine Corps.]

He was born in San Bernardino, California on January 30, 1930 to a printer father, Eugene, and Canadian mother Anna. They moved several times before settling in the house owned by his mum’s English-born mother in the small town of Danville, Illinois, where his father worked as a printer on the local newspaper.

Image Credit: The Sun [Aerial view of Gene Hackman's Santa Fe home.]

His parents were divorced when he was 13 and he and his brother Richard were brought up by his mother and grandmother. “I wasn’t a happy kid so ran away to join the Marines,” he told me. “I wanted to be an actor even at 12 and loved the genuine tough guys on screen like James Cagney or action men like Errol Flynn. But I hadn’t got it in me to follow my dreams.”.

Image Credit: The Sun [Gene Hackman holding the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globe Awards.]

Local police in New Mexico have confirmed that actor Gene Hackman has died aged 95. In a statement, they said: ". On February 26, 2025 at approximately 1:45 p.m., Santa Fe County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to an address on Old Sunset Trail in Hyde Park where Gene Hackman, 95 and his wife Betsy Arakawa, 64 and a dog were found deceased.

Image Credit: The Sun [Scene from Bonnie and Clyde (1967) featuring Gene Hackman, Warren Beatty, and Faye Dunaway.]

"Foul play is not suspected as a factor in those deaths at this time however exact cause of death has not been determined. "This is an active and ongoing investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.". Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza added: "All I can say is that we're in the middle of a preliminary death investigation, waiting on approval of a search warrant.".

Image Credit: The Sun [Gene Hackman and Tom Cruise in The Firm.]

After he left the army, he used his money from what was called the G.I. Bill - payment made to help former soldiers - to enrol on a course of television production at Illinois University. It led to an acting course at the Pasadena Playhouse in California.

Image Credit: The Sun [Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa at the 66th Academy Awards.]

His career was nearly over before it began, having received the lowest-ever recorded set of results for his ability. He was voted “least likely to succeed” along with another student, Dustin Hoffman. “I don’t know why we deserved that or what they didn’t see in us,” he told me. “But we moved in to rooms together in New York with the attitude ‘f*** ‘em.’.

Image Credit: The Sun [Gene Hackman with his daughters at a Superman premiere.]

“I then set out to prove them wrong, but all I could get were dead-end part-time jobs in bars or doing menial work. I did everything from digging up roads to being a doorman. “I was waiting tables on one occasion and met one of the instructors from Pasadena. He looked me up and down and said ‘we were right about you.’.

Image Credit: The Sun [Black and white photo of Gene Hackman and Faye Maltese.]

“I could have hit him, but just had to keep on smiling. I thought ‘I am going to prove you wrong, but I don’t know when.’. “Maybe all those put-downs made me more determined. But it could have been so much easier with a little help. It just seemed to take so long to make anything of myself.”.

What was he like? He looked older than his years, with early receding hairline, not always at ease on television interviews and wary about talking about his personal life. But Hackman’s films - and there were more than 90 of them - were mostly an event. They read like a tribute to some of the most exciting American movies.