Gene Hackman names the biggest regret of his movie career
The filmography of the legendary Gene Hackman features some absolute monster cinematic works, including his Oscar-nominated Bonnie and Clyde, I Never Sang for My Father, and Mississippi Burning. Many will also remember Hackman for his portrayal of Lex Luther in 1978’s Superman and its 1980 sequel.
Acting was always the profession that Hackman wanted to get into, with him once noting, “Acting was something I wanted to do since I was ten and saw my first movie; I was so captured by the action guys.” He’d go on to offer excellent performances in the likes of The Conversation, No Way Out, Get Shorty and The Royal Tenenbaums.
However, it was the 1971 William Friedkin film The French Connection that finally made Hackman become the star that we would come to know him as, and his portrayal of the New York City Police detective Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle earned the actor his first Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’.
However, because of that very initial action movie success, Hackman found that he had been typecast, something that he would later look back on with regret. In an interview with Film Comment, Hackman admitted: “Unfortunately, in film, one is cast so close to type, and I keep getting offered similar roles.”
In another interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Hackman explained how he wished he might have been able to express himself more often in the romance and comedy genres. He said: “I loved the Superman assignments, on account of the comic villainy I was allowed to do there, and the spoofing good humour in Young Frankenstein, and the idea of myself as a romantic leading man.”
Of course, as Hackman notes, he was afforded some opportunity to play comic and romantic roles and said that 1985’s Twice in a Lifetime, directed by Bud Yorkin, was a “very real pleasure”. Hackman’s efforts later in his career also offered a few comic moments, but it was always something he wished he’d been able to do more often.
Still, Hackman’s career is something to marvel at and without his role in The French Connection, it’s unlikely that he’d won his second Academy Award, which arrived in 1992 with the actor taking home the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ accolade for his role as ‘Little’ Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s revisionist western movie Unforgiven. So perhaps the actor can still count his blessings at the same time as wishing that things might have turned out a little different.
