Rachel Weisz’s overwhelming experience with Gene Hackman: “I’ve never seen anything like it”
If there is one thing that has become abundantly clear after Gene Hackman’s death, it’s that he was adored by his fellow actors. Throughout his four decades on the big screen, he worked with everyone from Paul Newman to Gwyneth Paltrow and earned the respect of his peers to a degree that few other stars can claim. His most iconic roles were as harsh authority figures, whether it was the crooked narcotics detective Popeye Doyle in The French Connection or the brutal lawman Little Bill Daggett in Unforgiven. But he put layer upon layer of nuance into every performance, making his work infinitely rewatchable for audiences and a master class for his co-stars.
One of the actors who had an informative experience with the Oscar winner was Rachel Weisz. They appeared together in Gary Fleder’s legal drama Runaway Jury in 2003 and shared one particularly memorable scene. At the time, Hackman was just one year away from retirement, and Weisz was just hitting her stride as a movie star. The film is a twisty thriller in which Hackman plays an unscrupulous jury consultant trying to engineer a favourable verdict for his client. Weisz plays a mysterious woman who seeks $10million from either side to secure their desired verdict.
In one scene, Hackman’s character approaches Weisz’s character on a tram and offers her $500,000 to stop meddling in the trial. She shuts him down, and their ensuing standoff crackles with tension and an undercurrent of sexual chemistry. In an interview in 2005, Weisz recalled making the scene with the actor and how he provided her with the material she needed to rise to the challenge even as he floored her with his talents.
“I’ve never seen anything like it because he just stood there, and I felt so powerless and so vulnerable next to him,” she said, “Because he’s 70 – I don’t know how old – and he’s the most physically present, sexual man I’ve ever stood next to… His aura is just immense, and he doesn’t do anything. I mean, he’s not acting. He just literally stands there, and he does nothing, nothing. And the power of him nearly blew me away. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
Regardless of how intimidated she was, Weisz is also a top-notch actor, and none of that trepidation shows in her performance. Instead of bending under the pressure, she rose to the occasion, which was probably exactly what Hackman was banking on. Weisz said that she intuitively “leaned into something sexual”, which in turn created a back-and-forth that was a little too risqué for the tone of the movie and didn’t make it into the final cut.
After her character signs a piece of paper, Weisz subconsciously put the pen in her mouth. “It was very unconscious,” she said, “But I must have done it a bit provocatively, and I started to walk away, and he grabbed me by the arm, pulled me back… and he said, ‘Be careful what you put in your mouth’.”
All of it, Weisz said – the tone of their interaction and even some of the dialogue – was developed organically in the moment. They didn’t discuss the scene before or after shooting it, and it left her in complete awe of her co-star, even more than she had been before.
“He’s really something else,” she said, “There’s just nothing like him.”
