LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s a tall task to try to whittle Gene Hackman’s career down to five notable films.
One of the 20th century’s greatest actors, Hackman’s career spanned more than 40 years and a variety of roles, from tough-guy parts to comedic turns, playing heroes, villains and one iconic sports coach in ways that captivated audiences.
The two-time Oscar winner was found dead in his New Mexico home, authorities said Thursday. He was 95.
Any selection is inevitably going to be missing someone’s absolute favorite, whether it’s as Lex Luthor in “Superman,” the private eye in “Night Moves,” or the sadistic sheriff in “Unforgiven.” But everyone’s got to start somewhere — here are a range of his can’t-miss performances, whether you’re revisiting as a fan, or lucky enough to just be discovering them.
“The French Connection” (1971)
Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, the narcotics detective at the center of William Friedkin’s film, is perhaps Hackman’s most defining performance. Cold, amoral, relentless and obsessed, he’s a bad good cop, and you can’t take your eyes off him. The characterization “virtually defines the attitude of ‘The French Connection,’” Roger Greenspun wrote in 1971 for the New York Times. “Hard-nosed, pork-pie-hatted, vulgar, a tough cop in the latest measure of a fine tradition, he exists neither to rise nor to fall, to excite neither pity nor terror — but to function.”
WHERE TO WATCH: Available to rent on video on demand
“The Conversation” (1974)
Just three years after “The French Connection,” and in the post-Watergate haze, Francis Ford Coppola gave audiences a paranoid masterpiece in “The Conversation.” Hackman is Harry Caul, an audio-surveillance expert in San Francisco who stumbles upon a murder plot. Consumed with guilt, trauma and suspicion, Harry, and the movie, are a product of the time, where neither God nor technology seems equipped to save us from ourselves. It’s also, as Roger Ebert wrote in 2001, simply “a taut, intelligent thriller.”
WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on The Criterion Channel and on VOD
“Hoosiers” (1986)
In David Anspaugh’s “Hoosiers,” Hackman plays Norman Dale, a basketball coach who failed at the college level and gets another shot at a tiny Indiana high school. It’s a movie about second chances and starting over, and it’s widely considered one of the all-time great sports film, perhaps best remembered for that inspirational speech. But it works because Hackman gives Dale the complexity of a lived life, where failure and hope don’t have to be at odds.
WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Prime Video
“The Birdcage” (1996)
Mike Nichols’ remake of the 1978 French farce, “La Cage aux Folles,” is not a Hackman-centric movie, but it does show another great side of him as part of a comedic ensemble. He plays a conservative senator unhappy about his daughter’s choice of partner (and gay in-laws) in the aftermath of a scandal, when he’s trying to appease his right-wing supporters with a so-called family values agenda that does not include humanizing queer relationships. He and Dianne Wiest make a feast out of Elaine May’s script.
WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Max until Feb. 28, and on Prime Video
“The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001)
There are few more delightful sequences than watching Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum, the disbarred lawyer trying to reconnect with his estranged children through an elaborate lie, taking his grandsons out for a day of mischief — riding on the back of a trash truck, go-karting through New York, crossing the street on a don’t-walk sign, shoplifting milk at the bodega, throwing water balloons at passing taxis — set to Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” Well, that, and his chosen epitaph in this Wes Anderson film: “Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From the Wreckage of a Destroyed Sinking Battleship.”
WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Prime Video
More notable Hackman films:
1961: “Mad Dog Coll” (debut)
1964: “Lilith”
1966: “Hawaii”
1967: “Bonnie and Clyde” (Oscar nomination, supporting actor)
1969: “The Gypsy Moths,” “Downhill Racer,” “I Never Sang for My Father” (Oscar nomination, supporting actor)
(asterisk)1971: “The French Connection” (Oscar win, best actor)
1972: “Prime Cut,” “Cisco Pike,” “The Poseidon Adventure”
(asterisk)1974: “The Conversation,” “Young Frankenstein” (cameo)
1975: “The French Connection II,” “Lucky Lady”
1978: “Superman”
1980: “Superman II”
1981: “Reds”
1983: “Superman III”
(asterisk)1986: “Hoosiers”
1987: “No Way Out,” “Superman IV”
1988: “Mississippi Burning” (Oscar nomination, actor)
1992: “Unforgiven” (Oscar win, supporting actor)
1993: “The Firm”
1995: “Crimson Tide,” “Get Shorty”
(asterisk)1996: “The Birdcage,” “The Chamber,” “Extreme Measures”
1997: “Absolute Power”
1998: “Twilight,” “Enemy of the State”
2000: “Under Suspicion,” “The Replacements”
(asterisk)2001: “The Mexican,” “Heist,” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “Behind Enemy Lines”
2003: “Runaway Jury”
2004: “Welcome to Mooseport”
Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press
