The Way He Looked: Remembering Gene Hackman
A couple of things that Gene Hackman told me have always stuck in my mind.
Over lunch in Toronto one afternoon, he said that he never turned down any script he was offered. For a major star to admit this was, to say the least, highly unusual. It explained how even then he had made over a hundred movies, more than just about any other leading actor in Hollywood (Michael Caine was a close second).
The other thing he told me was that he never looked at himself on the screen. I told him I couldn’t believe it. After all the great films he had made, Bonnie and Clyde, Downhill Racer, The French Connection, The Conversation, Mississippi Burning, Unforgiven, Superman, not to see any of them struck me as remarkable. “I have this vision of myself and I look pretty good,” he explained quietly, “and then I see this person on the screen and there is someone else entirely. I don’t like him.”
In that moment, he seemed so vulnerable, a gentle, sensitive man trying to explain himself, not at all the tough, authoritative figure he often portrayed in the movies he never saw—the kind of violent roles he said he disliked. He had to be talked into doing both French Connection and Unforgiven.
He had taken time away from acting when I spoke to him for the first time in Niagara Falls where the premiere of Superman II was being held. Gene once again, as he had in the original Superman, was playing the villainous Lex Luthor. He explained he took three years off, worn out from all the movies he had been doing. Later, I spotted him in the gift shop at the hotel where we were all staying. He was standing in line at the checkout, unrecognized, looking a little lost and lonely. I kind of felt sorry for him.
Years later, at our lunch in Toronto, Gene was warm and affable, already at the table when I arrived, not a publicist in sight. By the time we finished, he was doing something very few actors ever do—he was asking me about myself. Of course, nothing was better for my ego. I could be forgiven for thinking we were just a couple of guys sitting around over a good meal, shooting the breeze. I was pouring out my life to him, he was listening intently.
He left our lunch, walking out alone. No one gave him a second glance. He continued to make dozens of movies before doing something else most actors almost never do (hello Harrison Ford, Anthony Hopkins and Clint Eastwood), he stopped. Instead of making every movie he was offered, he decided he would make none and retired to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Hearing of the strange, tragic circumstances surrounding Gene’s death at the age of 95 in the home he shared with his wife in Santa Fe, I fought to ignore all the rumor and speculation swirling around. I remembered that long ago lunch, the warm and gentle man eager to hear from me, the superb actor who hated the way he looked.
Not hard to do.
