The former marine was able to plumb depths of nastiness that set him apart from other ‘hard men’ actors of his generation, such as Robert Duvall and Clint Eastwood.
Hackman’s generation seem like “the right stuff” now, good guys who had come up the hard way and had to struggle for attention.
That’s how close to us they are, and why Hackman knew, without resentment, that no one quite looked at his character Buck Barrow, in Bonnie and Clyde, when Clyde was played by Warren Beatty.
But bear in mind that Hackman, Nicholson, Eastwood and the others came of age as an earlier wave was dying off – Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power and Gary Cooper, who was the godfather then.
Hackman went off to Santa Fe and stopped working (on movies, anyway), while Eastwood directed a picture last year, Juror #2, which was not bad.
