The two-time Oscar-winner was found dead on Wednesday afternoon in Sante Fe, New Mexico, at the age of 95, along with his wife Betsy Arakawa, 65, local police said. Born in San Bernardino, California, his parents divorced early and he later lived with his British-born grandmother Beatrice Gray in Illinois. He would join the United States Marine Corps as a teenager, where he spent four-and-a-half years as a field radio operator, before coming back to California where he met and studied with Dustin Hoffman.
Hackman and Hoffman would enter the stage and compete for roles in New York along with Robert Duvall. Hoffman told the PA news agency in 2017: “I never thought that I would get hired when I was starting out. “Bob Duvall, Gene Hackman and myself, we were hoping just to make a living, off-off Broadway, off Broadway, we never thought any of this would happen.
” Hackman would have small early roles in Lilith opposite Warren Beatty, and period drama Hawaii with Irish actor Richard Harris. He got his big break in 1967 true crime film Bonnie And Clyde as Barrow Gang member Buck Barrow, opposite Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the outlaw lovers. This would also earn him his first Oscar nod for a supporting role, and lead him on to parts in neo-noir The Split, and the western The Hunting Party alongside British stars Oliver Reed and Ronald Howard.
Hackman would quickly follow this up with another Academy Award nod for 1970 drama I Never Sang For My Father, where he played middle-aged.