Entertainment
Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman and wife found dead at Santa Fe home with their dog
Hollywood legend Gene Hackman and his wife have been found dead at their home in the New Mexico city of Santa Fe, police have said.
Hackman, 95, and is wife Betsy Arakawa, 64, were found dead with their dog, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office said.
A statement to Sky News said: “We do not believe foul play was a factor in their deaths, however exact cause of death has not been determined at this time.”
Spokesperson Denise Avila said deputies responded to a request to do a welfare check on Wednesday around 1.45pm local time to find the couple and their dog dead at the scene.
Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa in 1991. Pic: Dave Lewis/Shutterstock
Hackman won an Oscar for a leading role in The French Connection, a 1971 action movie by William Friedkin, and another for best supporting actor in Clint Eastwood’s 1992 western, Unforgiven.
The French Connection earned him his first Oscar. Pic: 20th Century Fox/D’Antoni Productions/Schine-Moore Prods/Kobal/Shutterstock
He was also known for playing Lex Luthor in the Superman films of the late 1970s and 1980s.
Roles in the Francis Ford Coppola mystery thriller The Conversation and in the historical drama Mississippi Burning, where he starred as an FBI agent alongside Willem Dafoe, helped cement his career as one of Hollywood’s greats.
Playing Lex Luthor alongside Christopher Reeve’s Superman. Pic: THA/Shutterstock
Long career
The former US Marine appeared in more than 80 films, as well as on television and the stage, during a lengthy career that started in the early 1960s.
He earned his first Oscar nomination for his breakout role as the brother of bank robber Clyde Barrow in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde.
He is also remembered for playing Captain Frank Ramsey alongside Denzel Washington in the 1995 thriller Crimson Tide.
He starred alongside Denzel Washington in Crimson Tide. Pic: Richard Foreman/THA/Shutterstock
In the early 2000s, he starred as an eccentric patriarch in The Royal Tenenbaums by Wes Anderson.
Hackman’s final film appearance was in 2004’s Welcome to Mooseport, after which he retired from acting and began co-writing adventure novels with friend and underwater archaeologist Daniel Lenihan.
“It’s very relaxing for me,” Hackman told Empire Magazine in 2020. “I don’t picture myself as a great writer, but I really enjoy the process.”
Playing the villain in Unforgiven. Pic: Everett/Shutterstock
‘He could play anyone’
Michael Caine revered Hackman as “one of the greatest actors” he had known while presenting him with the Cecil B DeMille Award in 2003.
Arakawa was a classical pianist. The couple married in 1991 and lived outside Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Hackman had three children, Christopher, Elizabeth Jean and Leslie Anne, with his late ex-wife, Faye Maltese, who died in 2017.
Star Trek star George Takei said: “We have lost one of the true giants of the screen,” in a tribute on X.
“Gene Hackman could play anyone, and you could feel a whole life behind it.
“He could be everyone and no one, a towering presence or an everyday Joe. That’s how powerful an actor he was,” Takei wrote on X.
“He will be missed, but his work will live on forever.”
Read more from arts and entertainment:
Oscars A-Z: From Anora to a (disqualified) Hans Zimmer
Gossip Girl and Buffy The Vampire Slayer actress dies aged 39
Gene Hackman won his second Oscar in 1993. Pic: AP
Irish comedian Dara O Briain called Hackman “the finest screen actor ever”.
“Not a single duff performance, in a long, long career,” he wrote in a post on X.
Hackman was versatile on screen, working with a face that he described to the New York Times in 1989 as that of “your everyday mine worker.”
StudioCanal, the UK arm of the leading European film studio, called Hackman’s death “a colossal loss for cinema” in a tribute posted on X.