Gene Hackman’s least favourite thing about acting: “It’s very wearying”
Some actors’ contribution ends the second they finish performing, whether it’s on stage or on screen. The more famous they get, the less it tends to happen. Gene Hackman is inarguably one of the all-time greats, and his biggest issue with his profession was the inability to leave his work on set.
It wasn’t through choice, which only served to irritate him further. It was always clear that Hackman wasn’t one for pomp and circumstance, but being so good at his job only made it worse. He started out on the stage and graduated to the screen as a supporting player and character actor, cementing his evolution into a star and bankable leading man when he won his first Academy Award.
Before The French Connection, he hardly struggled for work, and everybody knew he was talented. However, most of his highest-profile gigs before William Friedkin’s classic crime thriller were supporting parts, including his first Oscar-nominated turn in I Never Sang for My Father.
After he collected the highest acting accolade in the business, he was suddenly one of Hollywood’s biggest names. People wanted to cast Hackman, audiences would pay to see Hackman, and the increased visibility that came with it quickly became the thing he hated most about being a recognisable actor.
“My least favourite thing in the business is having my still photograph taken and doing interviews about films or about my work,” he admitted to Theresa Hawkins. “It’s very wearying, and I do very little of that anymore. Also, you go on these junkets.”
Ideally, Hackman would turn up, shoot a movie, go home, and then never talk about it again. Unfortunately, it’s a luxury that stars don’t have, and the prospect of dealing with “a hundred people from the press” asking him the same questions for days on end was the furthest thing he could imagine from a good time when he’d been brought up on casting a character or a production aside after his last day.
“It’s terrible for the actors,” he raged. “But I don’t do any personal publicity anymore anyway.” He may not have been open to public appearances, but it was still written into the majority of his contracts that Hackman was obligated to promote his pictures by doing the very thing he had such an open disdain for.
Hackman loved being an actor, but he hated being a star. Actors have the ability to do the work and then call it a day, whereas the stars need to show up in force ahead of release to drop the tantalising soundbites that could entice paying customers to their local cinema and talk up their latest release as the greatest achievement of their careers. Ironically, he was too good to avoid the inevitabilities of stardom.
