The 25 greatest Gene Hackman performances

Hackman joined his “Lilith” co-star Warren Beatty for this culturally groundbreaking account of the infamous crime spree that turned its ill-fated title characters into outlaw legends. Hackman plays Buck Barrow, Clyde’s older brother, to the hick hilt; he’s a jovial goofball who’s beholden to his preacher’s daughter of a wife, Blanche. The film earned Hackman his first Oscar nomination (for Best Supporting Actor), and established the thirty-seven-year-old as the elder thespian statesman of New Hollywood (i.e. he was too old to be counterculture, but still young enough to identify as part of this seismic artistic movement).

Michael Ritchie’s emotionally remote drama about a gifted, yet selfish Olympic skier (Robert Redford) is mostly a technical showcase for the various cameramen who captured the sport in a thrillingly you-are-there manner that helped turn the sport into a must-watch event, but Hackman’s unsentimental portrayal of the USA team coach tasked with managing egos and winning medals gives the film an emotional grounding it might’ve otherwise lacked had it been too focused on its hotshot protagonist. He’s the only guy who wants what’s best for everyone.

Robert Anderson’s creaky play gets the TV movie treatment from the future producer of fourteen Academy Awards broadcasts, Gil Cates. It’s essentially a Eugene O’Neill drama without the poetry, but it gradually acquires emotional resonance thanks to the verbal sparring between papa Melvyn Douglas and son Gene Hackman. Douglas bullies and barks with emotive verve, but it’s Hackman who gives the endeavor a patina of artistic integrity as a widowed writer who’s always craved his father’s love. His charged final scene with Douglas, in which he futilely begs his stubborn father to let him make arrangements for his late-life care, makes the whole dreary experience worthwhile.

“You do things, and one day you wonder why you’re doing things.” There’s a lot of lunacy to savor in Bill L. Norton’s ‘70s Los Angeles time capsule about a struggling musician (Kris Kristofferson) trying like hell to escape his drug-dealing side hustle after too many busts, but Hackman manages to out-weird even Doug Sahm as Leo Holland, a crooked cop who blackmails Kristofferson into unloading 100 kilos of prime marijuana over one weekend. Hackman’s cop appears to be a borderline psychotic who’ll threaten to blow your head off one second, then helpfully lecture you on the health risks of smoking. But it’s not quirk for quirk’s sake. There’s a method to this jogging-obsessed lawman’s madness.

Hackman won the Best Actor Oscar for his fiery portrayal of NYPD Detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in William Friedkin’s fast-and-furious crime flick “The French Connection”. This is the Hackman we tend to revere: tough, street-smart and constantly cutting through bureaucratic BS to stay a half-step ahead of the bad guys. Doyle skirts procedure, but doesn’t wholly disregard it like Harry Callahan; he is racist and abusive, but that’s sadly realistic given the milieu. We don’t like Doyle, but we don’t like murderous French smack dealers either. This is why John Frankenheimer’s France-set sequel is more satisfying: it leans into the first film’s poliziotteschi trappings, and gets Doyle briefly hooked on the heroin he’s sworn to keep off the NYC streets. It’s top-shelf pulp, and it ends with a literal vengeance. 

Hackman re-teamed with director Michael Ritchie for this mind-blowing, twisted crime drama about a Chicago hitman (Lee Marvin) who gets sent to a Kansas City slaughterhouse to collect $500,000 from the establishment’s sadistic proprietor, Mary Ann (Hackman). This is a criminally little-seen film, but if you love Hackman you haven’t paid the man his due until you’ve watched this movie. He never got another role like this because, well, no actor fresh off an Oscar win makes a movie like this. It’s a movie lover’s joy to watch Marvin and Hackman banter – and a reminder that Ritchie was every bit the equal of Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg and De Palma in the 1970s.

We generally love Gene Hackman for doing one or two things to perfection in any given motion picture, but the roles in which he’s asked to display the full range of human emotion – joy, rage, sorrow, resignation – are rare. Jerry Schatzberg’s magnificent “Scarecrow” serves up prime Hackman. His Max is a cantankerous drifter who strikes up an unlikely friendship with the flighty Francis aka Lionel aka “Lion” (Al Pacino) all because the young man lights his cigar with his last match and, most importantly, makes him laugh. Max humors Lionel, loves Lionel, briefly hates Lionel, then mourns Lionel. It’s one of the loveliest depictions of male friendship ever committed to film, and Hackman punctuates it with one of the greatest final shots you’ll ever see.

Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece in between masterpieces (i.e. “The Godfather” films) stars Hackman as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert hired by a male client to record evidence of an extramarital affair. When he suspects that his client plans to murder the lovers, he withholds his tape; as a result, he soon finds he’s the one being surveilled. Caul is a classically surly character, but he is wholly devoid of the oddball flourishes that made Max or Leo amusing. Caul is a bitterly suspicious man whose sole quirk is his affinity for the saxophone; his insularity ultimately drives him to madness. This is one of the finest paranoid thrillers ever made, and it’s hard to imagine another movie star who could make someone so unlikeable this utterly compelling. Hackman’s never been better.

“You must’ve been the tallest one in your class.” Hackman’s comedic chops are his most underrated attribute, but he rarely got to let loose like he does as a lonely blind man whose desperate prayer for company is answered by Peter Boyle’s growling monster in Mel Brooks’s spot-on parody of James Whale’s “Frankenstein” movies. In the original film, the blind man briefly befriends the monster because he cannot behold his hideousness. In Brooks’s variation, his lack of sight leads to one calamity after another, prompting Boyle’s creature to flee the cottage in terror. It’s one of the greatest cameos in film history.

Arthur Penn’s brutally cynical neo-noir allows Hackman to work a fascinating variation on the walled-off Harry Caul. As pro-football-player-turned-private-detective Harry Moseby, Hackman lands somewhere between Philip Marlowe and Travis McGee; he’s sly, tough, but ultimately in way over his head as he tracks down a teenage runaway in Los Angeles. Moseby is a capable man, but, to paraphrase a character from another great Hackman movie, capable has nothing to do with it. Hackman imbues the sleuth with a world-weariness that curdles into defeat. No one plays these notes better than Hackman.

Comic book purists initially balked at the notion of a non-bald Lex Luthor, but Hackman is having such a ball as the Man of Steel’s archenemy that all but the most humorless must concede that his interpretation of the criminal mastermind remains the best yet put to film. Hackman expertly bounces from understated to glazed ham as the script requires; he’s a wonderfully wily foil to Reeve’s upright Superman, and a hilariously flustered boss when dealing with the incompetent Otis (Ned Beatty) and the flighty Miss Teschmacher (Valerie Perrine). He’s equally wonderful in the stitched-together “Superman II” and manages to retain his dignity in the woeful “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace”.

This box office bomb gives us the unlikely pairing of Barbra Streisand and Gene Hackman, and while it sounds like a clash of performance sensibilities in theory, the stars are game for a wacky good time. Streisand indulges her inner Judy Holliday as a ditzy aspiring singer, and Hackman volleys with a surprisingly nuanced portrait of a man in the throes of a volatile mid-life crisis. They’ve got a crackling chemistry, but Hackman’s the standout. Watching him get tossed around by the formidable Faith Minton in a drug store is a zany delight.

Roger Spottiswoode’s war correspondent drama is depressingly relevant today in an age where the President of the United States has willingly aided in the cover up of a journalist’s state-sponsored murder. The love triangle between Nick Nolte’s photographer, Joanna Cassidy’s radio journo and Hackman’s TV reporter is a non-starter, but everything else about this movie is urgent without being heavy-handed. Hackman is a natural with Ron Shelton’s witty-under-pressure banter, which leaves you wishing they’d teamed up again before Hackman’s retirement.

This underrated gem from director Bud Yorkin stars Hackman as a restless married man who takes up with a barmaid (Ann-Margaret) to the understandable consternation of his family. One of the film’s triumphs is how it refuses to vilify Hackman’s character for following his adulterous whim, while giving his daughter (Amy Madigan) equal footing in her outrage. It’s a deftly played conflict that resists pat resolution. Madigan evokes something human and helpless in Hackman that we rarely got to see.

The quintessence of Hackman. Tough-love coach Norman Dale rouses a team of rural misfits to an Indiana state basketball title, and the improbable victory feels preordained because what kid wouldn’t play their heart out for Hackman? Throw Dennis Hopper – a counterculture icon who represents the antithesis of Hackman in attitude and approach –into the mix as an alcoholic hoops savant, and you’ve got a winning underdog formula. Hackman barking “four passes” to his roundball charges is as iconic as it gets. He’s the stern-but-fair taskmaster of a coach every kid wishes they had.

Incidental or no, there’s a whole lot of Donald Rumsfeld in Gene Hackman’s portrayal of Defense Secretary David Brice, an arrogant SOB who convinces an ambitious aide (Kevin Costner) to furnish him with ill-gotten intel from the CIA. What sets up as an espionage-tinged love triangle (with a smoldering Sean Young) quickly turns into a spirited cat-and-mouse game between Hackman and Costner. Hackman is deep in the pocket here as a prickly political animal. He’s the opposite of Norman Dale: a hard-case boss you’d do anything to shiv.

Leaving aside the film’s ahistorical depiction of the FBI’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, Hackman is perfectly cast as a G-man who rides roughshod over a community of racist hicks clumsily covering up the murders of activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Again, if you can overlook its travestying of American history, it’s a deeply satisfying badass showcase for Hackman. He struts through the entire film like it’s only a matter of time before these hateful rednecks crack.

Hackman only gets a few scenes in Mike Nichols’s adaptation of Carrie Fisher’s semi-autobiographical novel, but he makes every second of screen time count. As director Lowell Kolchek, he gives Meryl Streep’s screw-up of an actress a sober creative pillar against which she can lean as her life and career spiral out of control. Nichols could’ve cast a character actor in this role, but he went to Hackman because he needed a performer who was Streep’s equal. When he hugs her in the sound studio and tells her she’s “corrected the past”, you sense a long history between these collaborators. It’s a wonderful moment that reminds you no matter how bad things get, the people who love you will be there when you fix things.

All Little Bill wanted to do was to build a house. Keeping the peace in Big Whiskey, Wyoming was a part of the bargain, and he held up his end by making sure no one brandished a firearm within city limits. As portrayed by Hackman, you sympathize with Bill’s approach to law enforcement, and gradually come to understand how a man of his era could become so horribly sadistic. It’s a masterful performance that adroitly avoids villainy. The man just wanted to build a house.

As the unfortunately named Avery Tolar, Hackman gives Tom Cruise’s rookie attorney a been-there-done-all-of-it mentor with oily ease. He’s a willingly compromised man, but there’s a melancholy to the portrayal. Hackman’s last moment with Jeanne Tripplehorn is crushing; drugged and defeated, he does one uncharacteristically decent thing before dying. “The Firm” is a brutally overlong movie, but Hackman gives it a reason for being.

Tony Scott’s submarine-bound thriller gives viewers the exquisite charge of watching two acting titans, Hackman and Denzel Washington, go head-to-head armed with juicy, A-list-scripted dialogue. That Hackman’s combat-tested captain turns out to be kinda racist is a bummer, but the verbal sparring up until that point is a joy to behold. It’s rare to see Washington play wet behind the ears, and Hackman clearly relishes the opportunity to give his formidable costar every last bit of the business.

Gene Hackman in drag! Mike Nichols’s remake of “La Cage aux Folles” is an uproarious acting showcase for Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, Dianne Wiest and Hank Azaria, but it finds its fifth gear thanks to Hackman’s straight-man portrayal of conservative senator Kevin Keeley, whose daughter is about to marry the son of gay parents. No one does the humorless, straight-laced bit better than Hackman, and he’s perfectly countered by the unbound duo of Williams and Lane. It’s everything you could possibly want from a movie.

Hackman re-teamed with Tony Scott for this twisty thriller about a labor lawyer (Will Smith) scrambling to stay one step ahead of the surveillance state. It’s essentially staged as an unofficial sequel to “The Conversation”, and Hackman’s character is very much an older, semi-checked-out Harry Caul. But you wouldn’t buy him as a man of buried principle without Smith’s ingratiating energy. Hackman seems invigorated by his costar’s exuberance, and puts some subtle spin on the ball. You can’t take your eyes off him.

“My motherf----- is so cool, when he goes to bed sheep count him.” When Ricky Jay plays your hype man, all you’ve got to do is show up, which is basically what Hackman does in David Mamet’s Swiss watch of a crime flick. The film amounts to absolutely nothing, but watching Hackman banter with Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito and Sam Rockwell is pure pleasure.

Hackman’s last great performance came with a price: he was verbally abusive to writer-director Wes Anderson on the set of this family comedy, and scared his costars. But that’s his character. Royal Tenenbaum is a lousy father who bullied and alienated his wife and children; they’re all messes because of him, and he’s not inclined to take responsibility for his poor parenting. Whatever Hackman was doing wrong on the set, it doesn’t show up in the performance; he etches a moving portrait of a man who can’t help but be who he is.