The co-star Gene Hackman hated working with: “For the next 12 weeks he would yell at me”
Gene Hackman is fearlessly devoted to his craft, with each element of his job that doesn’t consist of him acting being completely irrelevant and unenjoyable to the actor. Whenever he was selected for a project, every ounce of his being went into injecting the character into his soul and immersing himself in each line of dialogue as though they were his own thoughts. As a result, this led to some of the most dauntless and immersive performances of all time, whether it be his role in The Conversation as a haunted detective, The French Connection or his devastating part in The Royal Tenenbaums.
But while his incisive approach led to blisteringly authentic performances, his stark seriousness was not always appreciated or reciprocated by his co-stars, sometimes leading to creative disagreements.
John Travolta is the ultimate comeback kid of Hollywood, with his breakout role in Grease suddenly launching him to stardom before struggling to climb back towards the top, with years of hit-and-miss roles before his second reckoning in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. He then cemented himself as one of the most iconic actors of the 1990s, with a collective filmography that led to roles in other understated films like Blow Out, Carrie and Saturday Night Fever.
However, despite his undisputed star status and talent, he worked in a very different way to Hackman, with the pair of them clashing while filming Get Shorty in 1995. The film follows a Miami mobster who is sent to collect a debt from a Hollywood producer called Harry Zimm. After pitching his own life story as a movie idea, the mobster realises that perhaps his life isn’t so different to working in the movies.
While the film sounds light-hearted in tone, it was still a job to be taken as seriously as any other, with Hackman going through his usual rigorous processes to prepare for the character. However, Travolta wasn’t quite as intense with his preparation, and turned up to set without having memorised many of his lines, which Hackman did not respond well to.
After meeting on set, Travolta asked Hackman about his weekend, to which the actor replied, “Nothing except learn the lines”, with Travolta responding, “Well that’s a waste of a weekend”. As the production went on, Hackman grew increasingly frustrated by Travoltas lack of preparation, occasionally expressing this towards Travolta and the director, Barry Sonnenfeld.
When describing this, Sonnenfeld said, “For the next 12 weeks, he would yell at me whenever John didn’t know his lines. But he’s great in a movie. And I knew he was never really mad at me.” Despite the fact that Travolta and Hackman clashed over their methods, not every actor works in the same meticulous way, with the likes of Kieran Culkin proving that greatness can come from spontaneity, with the A Real Pain actor describing how his process for the character was a lack of preparation and reacting purely on instinct, only learning his lines the morning of each shoot day. However, Hackman did not approve of this method, and he preferred to be ready for everything that came his way.
