The "trivia" notes there reveal some interesting facts about him in that regard: he didn't start acting until age 25. And his early years were a long slog:
Was admitted into the famed Pasadena Playhouse on the G.I. Bill. He failed out of it after 3 months and moved to New York to continue being a stage actor. Received one of the lowest grades the school had ever given (1.3 out of 10). He headed to New York with the intention of proving them wrong.
After flunking out of the Pasadena Playhouse and moving to New York City with fellow drop-out Dustin Hoffman, Hackman worked at the Howard Johnson's restaurant in Times Square as a doorman. One day, a Pasadena Playhouse acting teacher whom Hackman hated walked by him, stopped, and told him that he had been right, that Hackman would never amount to anything.
He started getting work in TV when there was still TV production in NYC: NAKED CITY, THE DEFENDERS, EAST SIDE/WEST SIDE, THE TRIALS OF O'BRIEN. He was still mired in TV even after getting notice in BONNIE & CLYDE. It was the 1-2 punch of I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER (second Supporting Actor nomination) and THE FRENCH CONNECTION (Oscar for Best Actor) that put him over the top and launched a run of memorable films. But he was apparently crushed when SCARECROW (1973), which he considered his best performance, was a bomb at the box office...
Hackman has said that the failure of Scarecrow (1973) turned him off of art films due to the disappointment of working hard on a film that was critically acclaimed, but that tanked at the box office and failed to garner any awards. After this flop, Hackman mainly concentrated on acting for money, turning down such films as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Network (1976) for roles in films like March or Die (1977) and Lucky Lady (1975) that offered him fatter paychecks.
He's been quoted that the two things he looked for in any film project: the script and the money. (Not necessarily in that order, apparently!) And that may stem from his disappointment regarding SCARECROW. (Though he did make THE CONVERSATION right afterwards, but that might well have been in production before SCARECROW became such a commercial disappointment.)
I think Hackman took a more hard-nosed approach to filmmaking from this point on and that he veered away from films that might have repeated that disappointment. UNFORGIVEN and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS were the exceptions.
But he epitomizes the range of filmmaking that evolved in the seventies, and most of the films he made during that timeframe have aged exceptionally well.
Now I'm curious to find out more about his mysterious death...
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on 2/27/2025, 9:42 am, in reply to "