Gene Hackman was the last great everyman actor

Gene Hackman was one of Hollywood’s last great everyman actors. Whether playing tough guy cops, a superhero villain or the eccentric head of a family of New York aristocrats, the star – who died yesterday age 95 – brought a searing grittiness to his roles. He never seemed to care much whether audiences liked him – only that they stopped whatever they were doing and paid attention. In a business defined by glamour, he was the anti-movie star who conquered the box office through sheer force of will.

His best roles rank among the greatest performances of the past half-century. As The French Connection’s hard-nosed New York detective, Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, he helped create the cliché of the rule-breaking renegade cop. Opposite Christopher Reeve’s Superman, his wheedling Lex Luther brought complexity to the cartoonish world of comic book adaptations. Decades later, in one of his last great performances, he added a brilliantly curmudgeonly quality to Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums. In so doing, he saved the production from the tweeness that would later become an unfortunate feature of Anderson’s output.

Perhaps his greatest talent was his ability to conjure explosive anger – nobody could sell the idea of violence bubbling just below the surface of a normal person like Hackman.

“He is an extraordinarily truthful actor,” director Arthur Penn said in a 1988 interview. “He has the skill to tap into hidden emotions that many of us cover over or hide – and it’s not just skill but courage.”

It was telling that Hackman was propelled to stardom playing the moody, short-fused and unlikeable Popeye Doyle in William Friedkin’s 1971 thriller The French Connection. He wasn’t the first pick for the part, or even the third or fourth – the part had already been turned down by James Caan, Steve McQueen and comedian Jackie Gleason. But seeming to be in the trenches of middle age at just 41, Hackman’s performance convincingly conveyed the ugly reality of police work.

The 70s were the high-water mark of rumpled male movie stars who looked as if life had picked them up by the scruff and given them a good shake. But even amidst peers such as Elliott Gould, Dustin Hoffmann and Robert Duvall, Hackman was markedly unglamorous.

That would prove his secret power in Richard Donner’s Superman, where his Lex Luther is not a cosmic villain but a nasty, vindictive weasel in a bad toupee. Opposite Christopher Reeve’s all-American hero, Hackman was in his element – his greasy mane bringing a thread of realism to a film that asked audiences (raised on the gritty likes of The Godfather) to believe a man could fly.

Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, in 1930, and grew up in small-town Illinois, where his father operated a printing press. At age 16, the future movie star enlisted in the Marine Corps, serving in Shanghai in the late 40s, as China was wracked by revolutionary conflict.

He struggled for direction after the army – not helped by the death of his mother, in 1962. He tried journalism and TV production, but his life changed when he befriended aspiring actor Dustin Hoffmann, who encouraged his friend’s stage ambitions. Later, he shared an apartment with Robert Duvall when trying to make it as a theatre actor in New York.

Lacking a Hollywood dash, he initially struggled even to land auditions. More than one casting agent recommended a different line of work. But he refused to take such advice to heart. Ultimately, it was his determination to prove wrong the many who told him that he would never succeed that drove him onwards.

“It was more psychological warfare, because I wasn’t going to let those f***ers get me down. I insisted with myself that I would continue to do whatever it took to get a job. It was like me against them,” Hackman said in a 2004 interview. “But I think if you’re really interested in acting there is a part of you that relishes the struggle. It’s a narcotic in the way that you are trained to do this work and nobody will let you do it, so you’re a little bit nuts. You lie to people, you cheat, you do whatever it takes to get an audition.”

Every actor clocks up the inevitable misses in a long career. Hackman had his low points – including Tony Scott’s atrocious 1995 underwater drama Crimson Tide, in which he went complete cartoon villain as an out-of-control submarine captain. But he exited on a high with 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums. As with many memorable performances, it was born as much out of struggle as collaboration.

Hackman and director Wes Anderson did not see eye to eye. Indeed, he was initially reluctant to sign up, no matter that Anderson had created crotchety patriarch Royal Tenenbaum specifically with the actor in mind.

“It was written for him against his wishes,” Anderson said in Matt Zoller Seitz’s 2013 The Wes Anderson Collection, recalling Hackman as a figure of chaos, an actor who thrived on the turmoil of constant conflict. His “chaotic” approach included allegedly calling Anderson the c-word within earshot of the rest of the cast – prompting the director to ruefully reflect that Hackman “was not a relaxed, comfortable person in my company”.

He bowed out of Hollywood not long after The Royal Tenenbaums. Movie stardom had become an ever-greater strain, and he stepped away for his health. “The straw that broke the camel’s back was actually a stress test that I took in New York,” he said in 2009. “The doctor advised me that my heart wasn’t in the kind of shape that I should be putting it under any stress.”

Today, it seems wildly improbable that someone such as Gene Hackman could ever have become a famous actor. He didn’t have the looks, he never enjoyed fame, and his charisma was of the dark, brooding variety. Yet he leaves behind an incomparable legacy as one of cinema’s undisputed heavyweights – a performer who could burn a hole in the screen with a simple glare or tilt of the head. With his death, Hollywood has lost one of its true mavericks.