Years later when he was a doorman in New York, Hackman’s old drill instructor walked by and muttered that he was “a sorry son of a bitch.” Hackman resolved to redouble his efforts to make it as an actor.
“He’s one of the ones who are willing to plunge their arm into the fire as far as it can go,’’ said Arthur Penn, who directed him in three films, including the one that earned Hackman his first Oscar nomination, “Bonnie and Clyde.”.
Though one of Hackman’s defining roles, in William Friedkin’s “The French Connection,” Hackman initially recoiled from the character’s violence and racism.
Hackman’s death, mourned across the film industry, renewed an old conundrum: How do you describe Gene Hackman?
Together with Robert Duvall and Dustin Hoffman (a friend from the Pasadena Playhouse, where their classmates named them both “least likely to succeed”), Hackman spent years working day jobs in New York while hustling for acting gigs.
