Actor Gene Hackman and his wife found dead in their New Mexico home
County sheriff says foul play not suspected, but police are still investigating
Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman, his wife and their dog were found dead in their New Mexico home, authorities said Thursday. Foul play was not suspected, but authorities did not release circumstances of their deaths and said an investigation was ongoing.
Hackman, 95, was found dead with his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 64, and their dog when deputies performed a welfare check at the home around 1:45 p.m., Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Denise Avila said.
An email sent to his publicist by the Associated Press was not immediately returned early Thursday.
An affidavit for the search warrant, obtained by CBC News, says officers found the home's front door ajar but did not observe any signs of forced entry. Inside, they found the bodies of a man and a woman, both of whom appeared to have fallen suddenly.
Officers said they also found one deceased dog, as well as two healthy dogs — one inside and one outside the home.
A gas company is conducting active testing on the gas line in and around the residence, but detectives told the fire department they did not locate signs of a carbon monoxide leak or poisoning.
The affidavit says there "are no immediate signs or indications of blunt force trauma," but that the circumstances around the deaths are "suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation."
Hackman known for diverse range
The gruff-but-beloved Hackman was among the finest actors of his generation, appearing as both villains, heroes and antiheroes in dozens of dramas, comedies and action films from the 1960s until his retirement in the early 2000s. He was a five-time Oscar nominee who won for The French Connection in 1971 and Unforgiven 21 years apart.
Hackman moved to the Santa Fe area in the 1980s, where he was often seen around town and served as a board member of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in the 1990s, according to the local paper, The New Mexican.
Aside from appearances at awards shows, he was rarely seen in the Hollywood social circuit and retired about 20 years ago, his last major onscreen role occurring in the 2004 comedy Welcome To Mooseport, which was filmed in Port Perry, Ont.
Although self-effacing and unfashionable, Hackman held special status within Hollywood — heir to Spencer Tracy as an every man, actor's actor, curmudgeon and reluctant celebrity. He embodied the ethos of doing his job, doing it very well, and letting others worry about his image.
Hackman established his range in the first decade of his film career, from his breakout performance in Bonnie and Clyde, the farce of Young Frankenstein, the road movie Scarecrow alongside another rising star, Al Pacino, and as the secretive surveillance expert in the Watergate-era release The Conversation.
Later in his career, he switched seamlessly from dramas like Mississippi Burning, Hoosiers and Crimson Tide, to comedies like Get Shorty, The Birdcage and The Royal Tennenbaums.
He made no secret of his disdain for the business side of show business.
"Actors tend to be shy people," he told Film Comment in 1988. "There is perhaps a component of hostility in that shyness, and to reach a point where you don't deal with others in a hostile or angry way, you choose this medium for yourself …Then you can express yourself and get this wonderful feedback."
He was an early retiree for Hollywood, after being a late bloomer.
Hackman was 35 when cast for Bonnie and Clyde and past 40 when he won his first Oscar, as the rules-bending New York City detective Jimmy (Popeye) Doyle in the 1971 thriller about tracking down Manhattan drug smugglers, The French Connection.
In his later years, he wrote novels from the hilltop ranch that provided a view of the Rocky Mountains.
Globe and Mail entertainment columnist Johanna Schneller told CBC News that Hackman will be remembered as one of the greats.
"He's one of those solid rocks of American cinema, and he helped shape American cinema. He was such a vital part of it for so long," she said. "He was able to do everything."
Schneller said when she worked at GQ magazine in the 1980s and 90s, every actor she interviewed referenced Hackman at some point.
"They all said, 'I want Gene Hackman's career. I want to be as authentic as Gene Hackman. I want to be as committed as Gene Hackman."
Adam Nayman, a film critic and lecturer at the University of Toronto, says Hackman will be remembered for his wide range of roles.
"He always gave movies a little jolt," Nayman said. "You didn't get bored when he was on screen. Usually you kind of sat up because you recognized him and were excited to see what he was going to do."
'Dysfunctional' family life
Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, Calif., and grew up in Danville, Ill., where his father worked as a newspaper pressman. His parents fought repeatedly, and Hackman found refuge in movie houses, identifying with such screen rebels as Errol Flynn and James Cagney as his role models.
When Hackman was 13, his father waved goodbye and drove off, never to return. At 16, he "suddenly got the itch to get out." Lying about his age, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines.
In his early 30s, before his film career took off, his mother died in a fire started by her own cigarette.
"Dysfunctional families have sired a lot of pretty good actors," he observed during a 2001 interview with the New York Times.
His taste of show business came when he conquered his mic fright and became disc jockey and news announcer on his military unit's radio station. With a high school degree he earned during his time as a Marine, Hackman enrolled in journalism at the University of Illinois. He dropped out after six months to study radio announcing in New York.
After working at stations in Florida and his hometown of Danville, he returned to New York to study painting at the Art Students League. Hackman switched again to enter an acting course at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Back in New York, he found work as a doorman and truck driver among other jobs waiting for a break as an actor, sweating it out in the early 1960s with such fellow hopefuls such as onetime roommates Robert Duvall and Dustin Hoffman.
Breakout in Bonnie and Clyde
Summer work at a theatre on Long Island led to roles off-Broadway. Hackman began attracting attention from Broadway producers, and he received good notices in such plays such as Poor Richard, in 1964 with Alan Bates.
Small roles in film and television ensued, including a brief turn in 1964's Lilith, which starred Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg.
When Beatty began work on Bonnie and Clyde, which he produced and starred in, he remembered Hackman and cast him as bank robber Clyde Barrow's outgoing brother. Pauline Kael in the New Yorker called Hackman's work "a beautifully controlled performance, the best in the film," and he was nominated for an Academy Award as supporting actor.
Hackman's first starring film role came in 1970 with I Never Sang for My Father, as a man struggling to deal with a failed relationship with his dying father, Melvyn Douglas. Even though he had the central part, Hackman was Oscar-nominated as supporting actor and Douglas as lead.
Jackie Gleason, Steve McQueen and Peter Boyle were among the actors considered for Doyle. Hackman was a minor star at the time, seemingly without the flamboyant personality that the role demanded. The actor himself feared that he was miscast.
One of the first scenes of The French Connection required Hackman to slap around a suspect. The actor realized he had failed to achieve the intensity that the scene required, and asked director William Friedkin for another chance.
The scene was filmed at the end of the shooting, by which time Hackman had immersed himself in the loose-cannon character of Doyle. Friedkin would recall needing 37 takes to get the scene right.
The film was part of a flurry of work in the early 1970s for Hackman, including as a corrupt cop in Cisco Pike, musician Kris Kristofferson's first featured film role, the disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure, and Night Moves, featuring a young Melanie Griffith.
Persuaded by Eastwood
Hackman also resisted the role which brought him his second Oscar. When Clint Eastwood first offered him Little Bill Daggett, the corrupt town boss in Unforgiven, Hackman — who had played villains before, including as Lex Luthor in Superman — turned it down. But he realized that Eastwood was planning to make a different kind of western, a critique, not a celebration of violence.
The film won him the Academy Award as best supporting actor of 1992.
"To his credit, and my joy, he talked me into it," Hackman said of Eastwood during an interview with the American Film Institute.
For a time he seemed to be in a contest with Michael Caine for the world's busiest Oscar winner. In 2001 alone, he appeared in The Mexican, Heartbreakers, Heist, The Royal Tenenbaums and Behind Enemy Lines.
In 1956, Hackman married Fay Maltese, a bank teller he had met at a YMCA dance in New York. They had a son, Christopher, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Leslie, but divorced in the mid-1980s.
In 1991 he married Arakawa, a classical pianist. When not on film locations, Hackman enjoyed painting, stunt flying, stock car racing and deep sea diving.
With files from Makda Ghebreslassie and CBC News