Even as Hollywood turned politically correct, Gene Hackman continued playing ‘White Male’ authority figures with his trademark cackle. As Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde or Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection or as Lex Luthar in Superman, Hackman’s acting chops made him easily navigate the choppy waters of moral ambiguity that his characters confronted. Hackman was often the bad guy in the movies who you ended up rooting for.
You are known for not liking the glitz and glamour that has come with your career in Hollywood. Would you say that is true?
Oh, it hasn’t been that bad. People treated me very well. I’m almost embarrassed by how reverential everyone is to me. It makes me wish that I had started sooner than I did. I get along with actors very well, but I think they’re best taken in small doses. I don’t have a lot of friends in the business, really. I live in New Mexico in the mountains. I paint, and my wife does her music. So, I don’t see people in the business
You joined the Marines at the age of 16. How did that experience shape you?
It taught me a lot about life and about growing up. I was a fairly confused kid when I went into the Marines. I was shy and insecure, and although there’s still a lot of that in me today, I needed the discipline and the camaraderie to get me out of my shell. Being in the military also taught me to learn to concentrate and focus on myself. I think the most profound affect on me was of the time I spent reading while I was in the service. Hemingway, Stevenson, Twain, Conrad...I could never stop reading because those novels took me to worlds that I felt I would never experience in my own life. I felt I didn’t know or understand anything about life, and those books taught me a lot about the world.
Some of your greatest moments as an actor came in the early 70s when you did films like Scarecrow, The French Connection and The Conversation
From an artistic standpoint, it was a great era for me. But The Conversation and Scarecrow were both commercial failures, and that disturbed me a lot. I was depressed by the fact that those two very important films, which I invested so much of myself in, weren’t able to find an audience. I lost a lot of confidence in my ability to choose films and I started worrying that my career would go down the drain together with all the hard work I had put into it. The failure of those two films changed my attitude towards the business. I started looking at acting as a job and less as an art. I decided I would be less selective, take the money, and not worry so much about making grand artistic statements with each project. Ever since then, I understood that you’ve got to be willing to do commercial films in order to maintain your status as an actor to give yourself the freedom to do other kinds of films for pure pleasure.
Is it true that you almost played Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs?
If anything, I was going to play the FBI detective. I had bought the rights, and I was going to produce it and maybe direct it, but I finally gave it up because it was too violent. My children thought it was too violent.
Do you have any regrets when you look back on moments like that?
No, because you can’t do everything. I do have some regrets, but I’ll never tell.
Which director did you most enjoy working with?
Arthur Penn. He was a master at creating an atmosphere of tension on the set and putting that to work on screen. We made three films together, including Bonnie and Clyde, and I asked him to do Under Suspicion, but unfortunately he felt the project wasn’t for him. Penn was the kind of director I needed when I first worked with him on Bonnie and Clyde. He taught me a lot about the way a movie is made and the way you create a character.