Gene Hackman's death strikes a chord
It is to the credit of Gene Hackman, seen in 1993, that his dissatisfaction apparently did not affect his performances. Credit: AP
The death of Gene Hackman summoned the memories.
You start with the characters he played that you can’t forget. Popeye Doyle in “The French Connection.” Buck Barrow in “Bonnie and Clyde.” Little Bill Daggett in “Unforgiven.” Coach Norman Dale in “Hoosiers.” And for me, the haunting surveillance expert Harry Caul in “The Conversation.”
As you also do on these occasions, you try to pull the thread through a long career. In Hackman’s case, you come up with his oft-mentioned quality of being an Everyman — not that his parts were of the Everyman variety but that he could be every or any man dealing with every or any circumstance.
You note that he was self-effacing but brilliant at his craft. Not particularly handsome or ravishingly charismatic but somehow riveting on the screen. That he could do rage and warmth, frustration and humor, camaraderie and isolation, with equal skill and commitment. That most every moviegoer could find a Hackman role with which they could identify.
But you also discover that the richness of the connection with Hackman resided partly in a different contrast. He was so good at something he didn’t particularly enjoy.
William Friedkin, who directed “The French Connection,” remembered something Hackman once told him on the set: “I’m not even sure I like being an actor,” Hackman said. “I never thought of it as a real job.”
Hackman retired in the late 1970s before returning to the screen a few years later. But by 1991, his disenchantment with his profession and Hollywood in general was back in full bloom as he lamented about “the artistic community in Hollywood becoming more and more involved with the corporate world. It feels like the more one becomes involved in that, the less chance we have of creating art. That doesn’t feel right.”
Hackman hung on for another decade, telling “The Royal Tenenbaums” director Wes Anderson, “I’m finished,” after they completed filming in 2001. By 2004, he had walked away for good.
Hackman’s struggle and his ambivalence are oddly comforting. And familiar, in an America where so many people similarly seek fulfillment in the workplace.
Two years ago, in the wake of what we were calling The Great Resignation, which featured the phenomenon of “quiet quitting” — shades of Hackman — the Pew Research Center found that barely half (51%) of American workers said they were extremely or very satisfied with their job, a number that ticked down slightly in 2024.
That’s important because we have long known — and research has repeatedly confirmed — the role that satisfaction plays in job performance, relationships, and one’s mental and physical health.
It is to Hackman’s credit that his dissatisfaction apparently did not affect his performances. He had his coping methods. One was the way he disconnected from the business when he was off-camera, something else with which we can relate. He eschewed the celebrity carousel, disdained the choreography of parties and appearances. When his movie work was done, he withdrew.
His last film was the 2004 political satire “Welcome to Mooseport,” when he played a former president who was retiring to the titular town in Maine. At the time, Hackman explained his own retirement decision by saying he didn’t want to hang on so long that he exited the business on a “sour note.” Give the man credit for wanting to go out on top, even as you wonder how much he left on the table.
In his final decades, Hackman painted and sculpted and wrote historical fiction and, apparently, did not struggle with his legacy as an actor. In 2011, a GQ magazine interviewer asked him to sum up his life in one phrase. His response was classic Hackman: “He tried.”
In the end, my guess is that most of us at our end would want to be remembered in the same way.
Columnist Michael Dobie’s opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
