When Gene Hackman nearly came to blows with his screenwriter: “He wanted to throw a punch”
I don’t know about you, but if I ever found myself in a situation where I thought Gene Hackman was about to sock me in the mouth, I’d probably need to change my underwear.
Few actors have ever projected a more intimidating aura than Hackman, despite never looking like a physically imposing man. The star held his fear factor in his coiled body language, a glare that could turn people to stone, and a fierce vocal delivery that could make a grown man’s knees shake. Hackman didn’t look like a behemoth, but even as he got older, he still felt like somebody who could kick your ass.
Spare a thought, then, for screenwriter W Peter Iliff, who once found himself in a rehearsal room with a furious Hackman advancing on him with menacing intent. In the 1990s, Iliff was a pretty big cheese in Hollywood screenwriting circles, having amassed a tasty string of credits on movies like Point Break, Patriot Games, and Varsity Blues. In 1999, Under Suspicion, a twisty-turny thriller, became his latest script to be optioned for the screen, and to his delight, Hackman signed up to play the lead role.
Before long, Iliff was whisked away to a Puerto Rican hotel to embark upon three weeks of rehearsals with Hackman, co-star Morgan Freeman, and director Stephen Hopkins (Blown Away). This was a dream come true for the writer, who still counts those three weeks as “one of the greatest pleasures” of his career. The hotel had been closed due to hurricane damage, so the production built a makeshift set on its upper floor that looked exactly like the set eventually used for the shoot. For a while, this proved an ideal place to rehearse the wordy, intricate script – until one day it all threatened to go off the rails.
“This screenplay was very much like a stage play,” Iliff told The Hollywood Reporter in 2025. “Stephen had sat with me at the computer for months, getting every word right. And now I’m sitting there watching Gene bungle a line. Over and over.”
Iliff couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Hackman, a man he considered “the best actor in the world”, was struggling over one of his lines and repeatedly botching it. Everyone could see how frustrated the star was getting at his inability to deliver the goods, but no one wanted to say anything. Until, with a burst of unlikely confidence he’d soon regret, Iliff decided to tell Hackman exactly how the line was supposed to be said.
Suddenly, the atmosphere in the room became charged with uncertainty. Hackman stared a hole through this punk writer who had the temerity to tell him how to act, while a horrified Hopkins had one thought run through his head repeatedly: “If only I could have stopped you.” Things then jumped up a couple of notches when Hackman “angrily bolted out of his chair” and came at Iliff.
“I swear he wanted to throw a punch,” the stunned writer claimed.
At that point, Iliff thought about a documentary he’d seen detailing how Hackman used to go to bars as an angry young man to pick fights with taller guys. Iliff was a good few inches taller than the French Connection star, and he couldn’t help wondering if that was why ‘Popeye’ Doyle was now about to pop him on the jaw. Regardless, he decided to do the only thing that made sense to him in the moment: stand his ground. He met Hackman’s threat of physical aggression with the most cutting verbal barb he could think of: “Goddammit, Gene, how much longer do I have to sit here and listen to you fuck up my line?”
Once again, the air became electrified, and time seemed to stand still. Hackman, taken aback by Iliff’s response, “stopped dead in his tracks” and stared at the writer. Iliff knew this one could go either way, but he didn’t say anything and waited to see what Hackman would do. “He gave me a look,” Iliff recalled. “And then he gave me a grin.”
As silly as it sounds, Iliff’s decision to stand up for himself had impressed Hackman, and he now respected the writer, one alpha male to another. “That evening after rehearsal, Gene took me to dinner,” Iliff remembered warmly. “Just the two of us. We became very good friends.”
