The one movie Gene Hackman refused to watch: “I was kind of ashamed of myself”
You have to take risks as an actor if you want to discover the kinds of roles that suit you best. For Gene Hackman, taking a crack at an incredibly mainstream, slightly lowbrow disaster movie was an opportunity he decided to throw himself into despite the fact that he was suited to much more sophisticated dramas. It soon turned out to be a regret.
It’s understandable that Hackman would take on a role in The Poseidon Adventure because it was also set to feature many acclaimed stars, like Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters, but this clearly fooled the actor.
Stars they might have been, but this film really wouldn’t have been anything without them. Ronald Neame’s Irwin Allen-produced disaster flick was held together by its cast, although Hackman couldn’t tell you if his performance made it all better – he refused to watch it.
The last thing we want to do when we feel we’ve made a mistake is be faced with it, so Hackman went his whole career avoiding the movie, even though it was received really well by critics. The actor wasn’t convinced though, because he felt like something was off during filming. He’d not long won his Oscar for The French Connection, so this felt like a step backwards, especially because he just didn’t feel like himself at all.
“That was my idea of being a Hollywood movie actor,” he told The Guardian. “When I was working on it, I was kind of ashamed of myself. I had to have my hair poufed up at the end and slicked over. And the producer, Irwin Allen, was one of those guys who used to comb his hair from one ear across the top of his head, and I just didn’t want to look like him.”
The concept of the blockbuster didn’t exist yet, but The Poseidon Adventure came close, with the teasing of epic special effects and a drama-laden script spurring audiences to buy themselves a ticket to see the action unfold on the big screen. It was actually the second most popular movie of 1972 after Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, becoming a stone-cold classic of the decade.
Hackman was never against a slightly more mainstream kind of film, of course – he literally starred in Superman – but movies like The Poseidon Adventure just weren’t his bag, and this wasn’t about compelling characters, it was about the fight for survival after a tsunami hits a cruiseliner, and as exciting as that might sound, it just doesn’t possess the same depth as other Hackman vehicles like The Conversation or Bonnie and Clyde. I mean, Irwin Allen was never the height of sophistication.
Ben Stiller once recalled telling Hackman how much he loved the film, only for the actor to reply (via Vanity Fair), “Oh yeah. Money job.” At least he was being honest. Sometimes, that’s all a job is – something to keep an actor afloat until their next, much better, project.
Still, Hackman managed to escape the terrible fate that was dealt to Michael Caine when he starred in the The Poseidon Adventure sequel Beyond the Poseidon Adventure – this time directed by Allen – which was much, much worse.
