Gene Hackman, 95, and wife Betsy Arakawa, 64, found dead in their New Mexico home, Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office says

Two-time Oscar winner Gene Hackman, 95, and his wife, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, 64, and their dog were found dead Wednesday afternoon in their home outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office says.

In an email to CBS News early Thursday, the office said, “Foul play is not suspected as a factor in those deaths at this time. However, (the) exact cause of death has not been determined.”

“This is an active and ongoing investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office,” the statement added.

Hackman was a consummate actor renowned for playing complicated figures in such classics as “The French Connection,” “The Conversation” and “Unforgiven,” and who also delighted superhero fans as the comical villain Lex Luthor in three “Superman” films.

Hailed as one of the best actors of the era before retiring from the screen in 2004, Hackman moved easily among genres, from heart-wrenching family stories (“I Never Sang for My Father”), crime dramas (“Bonnie and Clyde,” “Mississippi Burning”), thrillers (“The Conversation,” “No Way Out”), and triumphant tales of sports (“Hoosiers”) to comedies (“Get Shorty,” “The Royal Tenenbaums”).

Rough-hewn and flinty, a movie star without stereotypical movie-star looks, Hackman gave even his humorous roles a slightly sinister, unpredictable edge.

The quality of Hackman’s performances and the charisma that the shy ex-Marine would bring to the screen were praised by famed stage director Ulu Grosbard, who’d once hired him for a small role in Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge.” In a 2004 Vanity Fair profile, Grosbard described the actor as “a complex guy. Very intelligent. A generosity of spirit. Socially charming. A lot going on in him. A certain sense of being tormented with past ghosts and things. That’s part of what he brings to his work.”

“Ghosts and things” were likely evoked in three of Hackman’s most heralded performances, in movies that redefined their genres. In William Friedkin’s “The French Connection” (1971), Hackman played “Popeye” Doyle, a New York City detective unbound by rules, who constantly crossed the line between law officer and law breaker while tracking down the head of a drug ring. Dangerous and unpredictable, his Doyle was brash, vindictive and colorful, whether it was chasing down a suspect while wearing a Santa Claus costume or recklessly driving a car in pursuit of an assassin through the streets of Brooklyn.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” (1974), he starred as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert whose wiretapping of his subjects leads to increased paranoia about his own safety when he believes he’s uncovered evidence of a murder plot; and in Clint Eastwood’s revisionist Western “Unforgiven” (1992), Hackman played “Little” Bill Daggett, the brutal sheriff of a Wyoming town who confronts Eastwood’s bounty-hunting gunslinger.

In a 2001 New York Times interview, Hackman noted that his scene in which he brutally beats up a bounty hunter played by Richard Harris was fueled by the disappointment that Harris hadn’t remembered working with Hackman on the 1966 film “Hawaii.”

“I just took that disappointment and did this kind of transference,” Hackman said.

Hackman was less “method-y” than some of his peers, though he admitted that the ways in which he would behave on-screen and off as he inhabited a character — fueled by memories of his dysfunctional family growing up and the slights he faced during his struggling early years — took their toll. Temper tantrums earned him a nickname: “Vesuvius.”

”I don’t mean to live my roles,” he told The Times. ”But sometimes I suppose it’s not comfortable to be around me.”

His success as an actor was merely one facet of Hackman’s biography. He also raced sports cars, flew planes, deep-sea dived, painted, designed houses, and wrote or co-authored adventure and historical novels — living a life as varied and challenging as the roles for which he became famous. “I need the diversity,” he explained to CBS’s “Sunday Morning” in 2000.

“One could say, you know, that I’ve achieved some manner of success,” Hackman said. “But it’s like the difference between being a doctor and a lawyer, and being, maybe, a laborer. I feel that, in some ways, my efforts of being an actor are so all-instinctive, and that I haven’t really paid my dues in terms of my contribution to the firmament.”

From character actor to star

A shy and itinerate acting student, Hackman washed out of classes at the Pasadena Playhouse with the worst grades ever. He had several TV credits (including “Naked City,” “The Defenders” and “Route 66”) and was featured in several light comedies on Broadway before appearing in the 1964 Warren Beatty film “Lilith.” After Hackman co-starred in “Hawaii,” “A Covenant of Death” and the war film “First to Fight,” Beatty hired him to play Buck Barrow, the older brother of bank robber Clyde Barrow, in the 1967 classic “Bonnie and Clyde.”

The film, directed by Arthur Penn and produced by Beatty, was a shot across the bow of the studio system in its glamorous and violent dramatization of a pair of Depression Era lovers who robbed banks and killed people. After initially receiving lukewarm reviews over its blend of blood and sardonic humor, “Bonnie and Clyde” quickly garnered a reappraisal, spearheading Hollywood’s own “New Wave” of filmmaking that revolutionized the industry in the late 1960s and ’70s. 

It earned 10 Oscar nominations, including one for Hackman for best supporting actor.

His film resume grew as a result, to include “Riot,” “The Gypsy Moths,” “Downhill Racer,” “Marooned,” and “I Never Sang for My Father,” earning Hackman his second Oscar nod for supporting actor, playing the son of a dominating parent (Melvyn Douglas). 

“The French Connection” would cement Hackman’s position as a movie star. The film’s brash, documentary-style production perfectly captured Hackman’s character, a seething, sadistic NYC cop seeking to bust a ring of heroin smugglers — like Ahab on the hunt for the white whale.

Although much of the film’s heralded chase scene — in which Doyle, in a car, pursues an assassin who has hijacked an above-ground subway train —  featured stunt driver Bill Hickman, Hackman as Doyle did drive for some of it, crashing his car into a wall.

At times during production, Hackman was unsure about his performance and asked to be fired. And then, after the film proved to be a hit, winning five Oscars — including for best picture, best director and best actor — he feared that he would be typecast as a determined cop thereafter. Hackman would return to the role in the 1975 sequel, “French Connection II,” in which he gave a grueling portrayal of Doyle suffering withdrawal from heroin addiction.

His star power led him to both big-budget studio fare, headlining an all-star cast in the 1972 disaster film “The Poseidon Adventure,” and small character dramas such as “Scarecrow,” opposite Al Pacino, and “Zandy’s Bride,” co-starring Liv Ullman. Other 1970s appearances included playing a private eye in the film noir “Night Moves”; a horseman competing in a cross-country race in the Western “Bite the Bullet”; a rum-runner in the Prohibition Era comedy “Lucky Lady” (opposite Burt Reynolds and Liza Minnelli); a contract killer in the conspiracy thriller “The Domino Principle”; and a World War II general in “A Bridge Too Far.”

One of his most memorable turns was an unbilled cameo in Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein,” playing a blind hermit who spills hot soup into the lap of Peter Boyle’s monster.

Then came “Superman” (1978), in which Hackman, as Lex Luthor, faced off against Christopher Reeve’s Man of Steel in a scheme that involved nuking the San Andreas Fault, which would make much of California slide into the ocean and turn Luthor’s worthless desert land into prime seaside real estate. 

Hackman’s criminal mastermind was wily, vain, cantankerous, and a bit too sure of himself. He told the BBC in 1986 that playing Luthor was great fun: “He’s kind of a flamboyant character and deranged, and all the things that actors love to play.”

Still, director Richard Donner had to go to lengths to coax Hackman into taking the job (a $2 million paycheck helped), and when the actor refused to shave off his mustache (let alone shave his head), Donner agreed to shave off his own mustache if Hackman got rid of his. Once the actor put a razor to his upper lip, Donner ripped off his own mustache —  a fake.

He continued playing Luthor for the sequel (shot concurrently with the first film), but when Donner was fired by the producers and replaced for the remainder of what would be released as “Superman II,” Hackman walked. A body double and dubbed voice filled in for him. He later returned to the role in 1987’s “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.”

“Getting to be somebody”

Eugene Alden Hackman was born January 30, 1930 in San Bernadino, California. His father, a pressman for newspapers, moved the family several times during Hackman’s youth before they settled in Danville, Illinois. It was there, when Gene was 13, that his father left the family with just a wave goodbye.

Seeking escape from an uneasy family life, Gene was entranced by the movies. He idolized James Cagney and Errol Flynn, and vowed to become an actor himself. “I loved the idea that somebody could convince me that they were a sea captain without being phony,” he told Vanity Fair in 2004. “I think because I was shy I felt insecure, and acting seemed like a way of maybe getting around that. Getting to be somebody.”

He dropped out of school and lied about his age to get into the Marine Corps, where he spent four and a half years. He got a taste of performing as an announcer on Armed Forces Radio, but injuries from a motorcycle accident led to his departure from the Marines, just in time to avoid fighting in the Korean War.

He tried his hand at acting with classes at the Pasadena Playhouse, where his fellow students voted him (along with classmate Dustin Hoffman) “Least Likely to Succeed.” He picked up and moved to New York City, where he existed in a stream of menial jobs as he tried to create a path toward an acting career, aided and abetted by a circle that included Hoffman and Robert Duvall. Married, Hackman even shared his apartment with Hoffman for a time, as they experienced disappointments that would have crushed others.

“It was more psychological warfare, because I wasn’t going to let those f*****s get me down,” Hackman told Vanity Fair. “I insisted with myself that I would continue to do whatever it took to get a job. It was like me against them, and in some way, unfortunately, I still feel that way. But I think if you’re really interested in acting there is a part of you that relishes the struggle. It’s a narcotic in the way that you are trained to do this work and nobody will let you do it, so you’re a little bit nuts. You lie to people, you cheat, you do whatever it takes to get an audition, get a job.”

The rejections, he said, “create a resolve in you that, no matter what kind of part you’re given, you can do anything. Give me the challenge, I can do it. The scarier the better.”

“He is incapable of bad work”

In the 1980s, his marriage with Faye Maltese, with whom he’d had three children, ended in divorce. Uncomfortable with life in Los Angeles, he contemplated retirement, though his desire for acting continued.

His credits included “All Night Long,” “Reds,” “Under Fire,” “Uncommon Valor,” “Twice in a Lifetime” (a rare romantic role), “Power,” “Hoosiers,” “No Way Out,” “Split Decisions,” “Bat*21,” “Another Woman,” “Postcards From the Edge,” “Narrow Margin” and “Class Action.”

In 1988’s “Mississippi Burning,” Hackman’s FBI agent scrapes against the by-the-book attitude of his colleague (played by Willem Dafoe) as they investigate the kidnapping and death of civil rights activists in 1964 Mississippi. Hackman earned his fourth Oscar nomination for his performance. 

Alan Parker, the film’s director, said of Hackman, “He is incapable of bad work. Every director has a short list of actors he’d die to work with, and I’ll bet Gene’s on every one.”

The ’90s gave him further latitude to explore his considerable range, from John Grisham legal thrillers (“The Firm,” “The Chamber,” “Runaway Jury”) to westerns (“Unforgiven,” “Geronimo: An American Legend,” “The Quick and the Dead,” “Wyatt Earp”). He brought heft and authority to the thrillers “Crimson Tide,” “Extreme Measures,” “Absolute Power,” “Enemy of the State,” “Under Suspicion,” “Heist,” and “Behind Enemy Lines,” and winking humanity to the comedies “The Birdcage,” “Heartbreakers,” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” and “Welcome to Mooseport,” his last film appearance.

In 1992, he starred on Broadway in “Death and the Maiden” with Glenn Close and Richard Dreyfuss, under the direction of Mike Nichols.

Hackman the writer

He retired from the screen in 2004 and would only return as narrator on a pair of documentaries about the Marines. He lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his second wife, Betsy Arakawa, and pursued his interests in art and writing.

When he met up with Daniel Lenihan for some scuba lessons, the two got to talking about adventure books they grew up with and decided to try writing one — a pirate story. Hackman wrote his chapters longhand in spiral notebooks; the two would then meet up at a café to go over their work. “I would have some pages, he would have some pages,” Hackman told “Sunday Morning.” “We would trade. And we’d read them over while we were ordering and eating, and by the end of that couple of hours, we would have critiqued each other’s work and decided where we were going to go from there.”

“The Wake of the Perdido Star,” a tale of shipwrecks and piracy set in 1805, was published in 1999. It sold well but received mixed reviews. The acclaimed actor now faced a new audience. He told “Sunday Morning,” “The fact that you’re being judged on your intelligence and your skill as a writer, and your skill as a storyteller, that was very tense for me — and being criticized, and finding that you’re vulnerable to the critics, in a way that I hadn’t experienced before.”

Hackman and Lenihan later collaborated on the crime drama “Justice for None” (2004) and the historical novel “Escape From Andersonville” (2008). Hackman then authored two books solo: a Western, “Payback at Morning Peak,” and a police thriller, “Pursuit.”

His interest in writing may have been inherited from his grandfather, a reporter, and he’d explored that avenue of expression as far back at the 1980s when he’d optioned a crime novel by Thomas Harris that he’d hoped to adapt, direct and star in. But his screenplay grew distressingly overlong and he let the option slide. The book: “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Hackman regularly refused interviews in his later years but in 2021, to mark the 50th anniversary of “The French Connection,” he shared with the New York Post the revelation that he’d only watched the film once. “Filmmaking has always been risky — both physically and emotionally — but I do choose to consider that film a moment in a checkered career of hits and misses,” he wrote in an email.

As for the car chase, he added, “There was a better one filmed a few years earlier with Steve McQueen,” tipping his hat to the 1968 film “Bullitt.”

Maybe. But at the conclusion of “The French Connection” chase, Hackman’s “Popeye” Doyle, like so many of his other characters, refused to let his prey get the better of him.