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    Gene Hackman’s Smile Could Give You Shivers

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    In “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Unforgiven,” the actor used his charm to great disarming effect, flashing a smile before abruptly shifting to a sneer.When Clint Eastwood needed a performer who could persuasively go boot-toe to boot-toe with him in his brutal 1992 western “Unforgiven,” he needed an actor who was his towering equal onscreen. Eastwood needed a performer with strange charisma, one who could at once effortlessly draw the audience to his character and repulse it without skipping a beat. This actor didn’t need the audience’s love, and would never ask for it. He instead needed to go deep and dark, playing a villain of such depravity that he inspired the viewer’s own blood lust. Eastwood needed a legend who could send shivers up spines. He needed Gene Hackman.Hackman, whose death at 95 was announced on Thursday, was one of the defining actors of New Hollywood, that roughly decadelong, feverish period of artistic ferment that began with films like “Bonnie and Clyde,” Arthur Penn’s 1967 gangster drama. The era was famously defined by directors who helped rejuvenate the industry but was also known for male stars who didn’t conform to old studio ideals. With their unfixed noses and rough edges, these were men who once would have been largely confined to character roles. The glamorous-looking Warren Beatty played the male lead in “Bonnie and Clyde,” but it was Hackman’s striking supporting turn as Clyde’s brother, Buck, that heralded something new.Hackman holds your gaze the moment that Buck jumps out of a jalopy in “Bonnie and Clyde” into his brother’s arms; Buck is soon in Clyde’s gang, too. Buck is an outsized character, given to flailing and whooping, and Hackman delivers a suitably full-bodied, demonstrative performance that instantly gives you a sense of the character without once edging into scene stealing. His slight whine thickened with a deep-fried accent, Hackman also smiles a great deal as Buck, which humanizes the character so wholly that it lulls you into brief complacency, leaving you unprepared — almost — for the violence that rapidly engulfs him.Hackman, left, and Warren Beatty as thieving brothers in “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967). Screen Archives/Getty ImagesHackman’s smiles were one of his signature moves, and he used them to great disarming effect, deploying them to put other characters (and you) at ease before he abruptly shifted gears. It’s one reason he was such an effective villain. (His restraint as a surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 thriller, “The Conversation,” is one reason the film is so unnerving.) Hackman used smiles to charm and seduce, but also to obfuscate. Some actors let you see the rage boiling in their characters, the throbbing veins of hate. If you made a study of Hackman’s work, you might note that when one of his characters draws you to him with an upward curve of his mouth, something bad might happen soon. You would also divine that, thanks to his superb control, you could never predict when that false front would drop.There’s something sublimely fitting then in the fact that Hackman is dressed as Santa when he appears in his star-making role in William Friedkin’s “The French Connection,” the 1971 thriller that earned him a best actor Oscar. Hackman plays Popeye Doyle, a New York detective helping to bring down a heroin-smuggling outfit. Popeye is undercover in the opener, watching a suspect while ringing Santa’s bell and charming some kids with his patter, a smile peeping out from under his ill-fitting white beard. All of a sudden, Popeye and another cop (Roy Scheider) are chasing the suspect through the city’s derelict, litter-strewn streets. As soon as the detectives tackle the runaway in an empty lot, Popeye begins hitting the guy savagely. “I wanna bust him,” he says repeatedly, blood smeared on his Santa sleeve.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Others Mourn Gene Hackman

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      A two-time Academy Award winner and a dogged Everyman in many of his roles, Hackman was remembered by collaborators and co-stars after his death.Tributes for the actor Gene Hackman, who was found dead on Wednesday at the age of 95 at his home in Santa Fe, N.M., with his wife and one of their dogs, streamed in from collaborators and co-stars as the news spread.Hackman, who played flawed Everymen, inflexible patriarchs and inspirational mentors, had decades of notable roles, prompting generations of mourners to remember their time working with the actor.Francis Ford CoppolaCoppola, who directed Hackman in the 1974 neo-noir “The Conversation,” in which the actor played a wiretapping expert enmeshed in paranoia, posted a photo of them on the set together.“The loss of a great artist, always cause for both mourning and celebration: Gene Hackman a great actor, inspiring and magnificent in his work and complexity,” Coppola wrote in the caption. “I mourn his loss, and celebrate his existence and contribution.”Morgan FreemanFreeman, who co-starred with Hackman in the 1992 neo-western “Unforgiven,” which won best picture and best supporting actor for Hackman at the Academy Awards, posted a picture of them from a later collaboration with Monica Bellucci. In the caption, he said working with Hackman on that movie, “Under Suspicion,” from 2000, was “one of the personal highlights of my career.”Gwyneth PaltrowPaltrow, who played the daughter to Hackman’s eccentric patriarch in Wes Anderson’s 2001 dramedy “The Royal Tenenbaums,” posted a cropped image of that movie’s cast that centered her, Luke Wilson and Hackman. She captioned it only with an emoji of a broken heart.Barry SonnenfeldSonnenfeld posted a still from “Get Shorty,” the 1995 gangster comedy he directed in which Hackman played a B-movie director with a large gambling debt who was chased down by a mobbed-up loan shark played by John Travolta.“He was brilliant, hilarious and always real,” Sonnenfeld wrote in the caption. “And always knew his lines. Couldn’t ask for more from an actor.”Nathan LaneLane, one of Hackman’s co-stars in the 1996 queer farce comedy “The Birdcage,” said in a statement that he thought he told Hackman he was his favorite actor every day during filming. He also praised Hackman’s range in both comedy and drama, saying it was a privilege to share the screen with him.“Getting to watch him up close, it was easy to see why he was one of our greatest,” Lane said in the statement, reported by Variety and People magazine. “You could never catch him acting. Simple and true, thoughtful and soulful, with just a hint of danger.”Hank AzariaAzaria, who played the Guatemalan housekeeper and aspiring drag queen Agador Spartacus in “The Birdcage,” posted stills from that movie with him and Hackman, who played an ultraconservative Republican senator meeting the gay parents of his future son-in-law.“It was an honor and an education working with Gene Hackman,” Azaria wrote. “Mike Nichols said of his genius character acting: ‘He always brought just enough of a different part of the real gene to each role he played.’” More

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      Gene Hackman’s Career Is a Tribute to the Pugnacious Nature of Surprise

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      He could be both paternal and terrifying, and had the ability to almost goad you into liking men who would otherwise be despicable.When you first see Gene Hackman in “The French Connection,” he’s wearing a Santa suit, conversing with a bunch of kids. It’s a jolly image that runs counter to what we’ll soon come to know about Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, the porkpie-hat-wearing detective that became one of Hackman’s most notable roles. The Santa disguise starts to peel off as he leaves the children behind to sprint after and brutalize a perp. Kindly Santa, this man is not.But that was the extraordinary power of Hackman, who was found dead Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe., N.M., at the age of 95. Throughout his long career — that was somehow too short, thanks to a conscious retirement — he mixed warmth with menace. He could be paternal as well as terrifying, sometimes all within the same film.Hackman often played men doggedly pursuing impossible goals despite looming threats and their superiors telling them to back off, but there was a doggedness about him, too. He had a pugnacious ability to almost goad you into liking guys who would otherwise be despicable, be they criminals, cops or just absentee fathers. Despite their often unsavory behavior, Hackman made it fun to spend time with these people, even if you might not want to encounter them in real life.Hackman never quite made sense as a movie star. When he was cast alongside Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), the movie that would net him his first Oscar nomination, that became obvious. While Beatty as one of the eponymous robbers was smooth with a luscious mane of black hair, Hackman’s Buck Barrow, Clyde’s brother, was jittery and balding — but no less an entrancing and terrifying presence, with a livewire energy that felt genuinely unmoored.“Bonnie and Clyde” cast members, from left: Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and Michael J. Pollard.Bettman, via GettyHackman routinely inspired the use of the term “Everyman” in articles, but that seemed like an incomplete way of capturing his appeal. In 1989, The New York Times Magazine qualified that description by calling him “Hollywood’s Uncommon Everyman.” Twelve years later, The Times described him as “Hollywood’s Every Angry Man.” He was an Everyman with an asterisk.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More