James Cagney: the actor who inspired Gene Hackman’s entire career
Acting has always been a profession where one generation inspires the next, and there was only one actor that Gene Hackman named as the single biggest inspiration for what would go down as a legendary career.
Unlike many of his ‘New Hollywood’ peers like Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro, it wasn’t Marlon Brando. In fact, the star who became the most aspirational goal for Hackman to emulate once he’d set his sights on acting was a hero he shared with the director behind one of his greatest performances.
Clint Eastwood described Hackman as the only perfect actor he’d ever worked with, and the two shared a deep mutual respect and professional admiration for each other. Beyond that, they both grew up idolising the exact same actor, with the latter first dreaming of a career on stage and screen when he was only ten years old.
Hackman was hooked from the first movie he ever saw, explaining to Deseret that he was immediately enraptured by a ‘Golden Age’ favourite who, much like he’d go on to do, made their name embodying a string of no-nonsense and authoritative tough guys who played by their own set of rules.
“I was so captured by the action guys,” he said. “Jimmy Gagney was my favourite. Without realising it, I could see he had tremendous timing and vitality. Guys like Errol Flynn were a problem for me. I would come out of the theatre and see myself in the mirror of the lobby and be stunned that I didn’t look like him.”
Hackman was never going to be a tights-wearing man of derring-do like Flynn, but emulating Cagney was a much more apt and attainable goal. The parallels between them were there for all to see: they broke through as character actors before segueing into leading roles, gravitas came effortlessly naturally, they could never be accused of giving a terrible performance, and they each won at least one Oscar apiece.
The major difference between them is that, unlike Cagney, who was for large stretches of his career, Hackman never fell victim to typecasting. While there were definitely certain types of characters he was better suited to than others, the two-time Oscar-winning legend never found himself stuffed into an archetypal box he struggled to break out of, something that the former struggled with after appearing in so many gangster flicks throughout the 1930s and 1940s.
Cagney may not be spoken about in the same reverential tones as somebody like Brando, but if he was the biggest inspiration and favourite actor for two all-time Hollywood titans in Hackman and Eastwood – who boast six Oscars and a catalogue of classics between them that will endure for decades to come – then his importance to those who followed in his footsteps can’t be overstated.
