He wasn’t gorgeous like Redford or dangerously sexy like Nicholson, or even puckish like Hoffman; Hackman was normal, but his normality was steroidally supercharged.
He was the character actor who was really a star; in fact the star of every scene he was in – that tough, wised-up, intelligent but unhandsome face perpetually on the verge of coolly unconcerned derision, or creased in a heartbreakingly fatherly, pained smile.
Gene Hackman’s performance as surveillance expert Harry Caul in Francis Coppola’s paranoid conspiracy drama The Conversation (1974) was a jewel in his career.
Hackman was the gold standard for this era, ever since Warren Beatty gave him his big break with the role of Buck Barrow in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
From The Conversation to The Royal Tenenbaums, the actor rode America’s new wave to become the gold standard for characterful acting with heft.
