The one director Gene Hackman put the fear of god into: “You better bring your A-game”
As a general rule, directors shouldn’t be terrified of their actors. For one thing, it’s hard for a filmmaker to establish authority on set when they’re permanently quaking in their boots. However, Gene Hackman had that effect on people, and one filmmaker was petrified at the prospect of working with one of the greats.
One of the ‘New Hollywood’ era’s breakthrough talents, Hackman became a leading man based on nothing but sheer talent. Actors who got their name above the title in eras past – and future, for that matter – tended to be the more conventionally handsome and telegenic types with million-dollar smiles.
Hackman, meanwhile, looked permanently pissed off. He was as jowly as he was scowly, but he was so good that his grizzled visage and thinning hair that didn’t mark him out as the prototypical A-lister were comfortably offset by his ability to enrapture an audience. It wasn’t just an act, either, with the two-time Academy Award winner famously having a tendency to put anyone who crossed him in their place.
If he thought one of his co-stars was unprofessional, he’d let it be known. If he didn’t think one of his directors was up to the task, then he’d tell them to their faces. That no-frills, no-nonsense, and no-bullshit approach was indicative of Hackman’s approach to acting in general: he loved performing, he just happened to hate the rest of the bells and whistles that came with Hollywood.
When production began on the military action thriller Behind Enemy Lines in late 2000, first-time director John Moore was only 30 years old. As a debutant working with a decent-sized budget and a living legend, he was understandably trepidatious about handling the notoriously gruff Hackman.
His concerns didn’t go away once the cameras were rolling, especially when he witnessed the star’s unusual approach. “He was just quietly sitting there, taking script pages out, cutting them up, removing extraneous stuff like scene descriptions, and then sticking them back onto blank pages,” he recalled.
When it was time to shoot his scenes, Hackman only had one pearl of wisdom to dispense: “Acting is my job, you do the rest.” An obvious assessment of how the movie business works, sure, but more than enough to leave Moore trembling from the fear of what would happen if his work from behind the camera didn’t match up to what the actor was doing in front of it.
“It put the fear of god into me,” he confessed. “It was essentially him saying, ‘I don’t need anything, as I’m that good. You better bring your A-game, as I’m bringing mine.'” As much as it seemed like Hackman was incapable of giving a bad performance, nobody would go out on a limb and say that Behind Enemy Lines‘ Leslie McMahon Reigart is one of his best.
Still, few in the business could stand around and bark exposition quite like he could, and while it wasn’t a very good film, Moore managed to emerge unscathed without facing Hackman’s wrath.
