Actor Gene Hackman and wife found dead in their New Mexico home as police investigate
Investigators say the two appeared to have been dead for some time before their bodies were discovered
Police are investigating but do not suspect foul play after Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman, his wife and their dog were found dead in their New Mexico home on Thursday.
Hackman, 95, was found dead along with his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 65, and their dog when deputies performed a welfare check at the home at about 1:45 p.m., Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Denise Avila said.
Hackman's daughters, Elizabeth and Leslie, and granddaughter Annie later confirmed the deaths in a statement sent to CBC News.
"It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our father, Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy," the statement said. "He was loved and admired by millions around the world for his brilliant acting career, but to us he was always just Dad and Grandpa. We will miss him sorely and are devastated by the loss."
The sheriff's office said a maintenance worker had contacted neighbourhood security to conduct a welfare check after not receiving an answer at the home, and a security officer observed Arakawa on the ground through a window and called 911.
An affidavit for the search warrant, obtained by CBC News, says officers found the home's front door ajar but did not see any signs of forced entry. Inside, they found the bodies of a man and a woman, in separate rooms, both of whom appeared to have fallen suddenly. Arakawa was found in a bathroom near a space heater, while Hackman was in the entryway with a cane lying nearby, authorities said.
Officers said they also found one deceased dog, as well as two healthy dogs — one inside and one outside the home.
A gas company is conducting active testing on the gas line in and around the residence, but detectives told the fire department they didn't see signs of a carbon monoxide leak or poisoning. Carbon monoxide and toxicology test results are pending.
The affidavit said there were no indications of blunt force trauma or wounds, but that the circumstances around the deaths are "suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation."
The sheriff's office later said initial autopsy findings noted there was no external trauma to either individual.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza told reporters that the two had been deceased "for quite a while" by the time officers found them, and noted that the dog that died had been inside a kennel. The worker who called 911 and another worker later told authorities that they rarely saw Hackman and Arakawa, and that their last contact with them had been about two weeks ago.
Hackman known for diverse range
The gruff-but-beloved Hackman was among the finest actors of his generation, appearing as both villains, heroes and antiheroes in dozens of dramas, comedies and action films from the 1960s until his retirement in the early 2000s. He was a five-time Oscar nominee who won for The French Connection in 1971 and Unforgiven, 21 years later.
Hackman moved to the Santa Fe area in the 1980s, where he was often seen around town and served as a board member of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in the 1990s, according to the local paper, The New Mexican.
Although self-effacing and unfashionable, Hackman held special status within Hollywood — heir to Spencer Tracy as an everyman, actor's actor, curmudgeon and reluctant celebrity. He embodied the ethos of doing his job, doing it very well and letting others worry about his image.
Hackman established his range in the first decade of his film career, from his breakout performance in Bonnie and Clyde, the farce of Young Frankenstein, the road movie Scarecrow alongside another rising star, Al Pacino, and as the secretive surveillance expert in the Watergate-era release The Conversation.
Later in his career, he switched seamlessly from dramas like Mississippi Burning, Hoosiers and Crimson Tide, to comedies like Get Shorty, The Birdcage and The Royal Tenenbaums.
Hackman made no secret of his disdain for the business side of show business.
"Actors tend to be shy people," he told Film Comment in 1988. "There is perhaps a component of hostility in that shyness, and to reach a point where you don't deal with others in a hostile or angry way, you choose this medium for yourself … Then you can express yourself and get this wonderful feedback."
When not on film locations, Hackman enjoyed painting, stunt flying, stock car racing and deep sea diving. He was an early retiree from Hollywood, after being a late bloomer.
Hackman was 35 when cast in Bonnie and Clyde and past 40 when he won his first Oscar, as the rules-bending New York City detective Jimmy (Popeye) Doyle in The French Connection, the 1971 thriller about tracking down Manhattan drug smugglers.
Aside from appearances at awards shows, he was rarely seen in the Hollywood social circuit and retired about 20 years ago. His last major onscreen role was in the 2004 comedy Welcome To Mooseport, filmed in Port Perry, Ont.
Canadian actor Jackie Richardson, who worked with Hackman on Welcome to Mooseport, told CBC News he was "a beautiful human being."
"He had that warm personality that he opened up and made you feel comfortable. He had a wonderful sense of humour and he was just a real neat guy to be around," she said.
"The instant response from people around the world expressing their sorrow says everything, that he had a lot of people who respected, admired and loved him."
One of American cinema's 'solid rocks'
Globe and Mail entertainment columnist Johanna Schneller told CBC News that Hackman will be remembered as one of the greats.
"He's one of those solid rocks of American cinema, and he helped shape American cinema. He was such a vital part of it for so long," she said. "He was able to do everything."
Schneller said when she worked at GQ magazine in the 1980s and '90s, every actor she interviewed referred to Hackman at some point.
"They all said, 'I want Gene Hackman's career. I want to be as authentic as Gene Hackman. I want to be as committed as Gene Hackman.'"
Adam Nayman, a film critic and lecturer at the University of Toronto, said Hackman will be remembered for his wide range of roles.
"He always gave movies a little jolt," Nayman said. "You didn't get bored when he was on screen. Usually you kind of sat up because you recognized him and were excited to see what he was going to do."
Hackman met Arakawa, a classically trained pianist who grew up in Hawaii, when she was working part-time at a California gym in the mid-1980s. They soon moved in together and relocated to Santa Fe by the end of the decade. They married in 1991.
Raised in Honolulu, Arakawa studied piano from an early age and was just 11 when she performed for 9,000 children at the Honolulu International Center Concert Hall, according to a 1971 report from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin newspaper.
After graduating from the University of Southern California with a degree in social sciences and communication, Arakawa played with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, now the Hawai'i Symphony Orchestra. After moving to Santa Fe with Hackman, she helped found Pandora's, a home furnishing business, in 2001.
'Dysfunctional' family life
Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, Calif., and grew up in Danville, Ill., where his father worked as a newspaper pressman. His parents fought repeatedly, and Hackman found refuge in movie houses, identifying with such screen rebels as Errol Flynn and James Cagney as his role models.
When Hackman was 13, his father waved goodbye and drove off, never to return. At 16, he "suddenly got the itch to get out." Lying about his age, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines.
In his early 30s, before his film career took off, his mother died in a fire started by her own cigarette.
"Dysfunctional families have sired a lot of pretty good actors," he observed during a 2001 interview with the New York Times.
His taste of show business came when he conquered his mic fright and became a disc jockey and news announcer on his military unit's radio station. With a high school degree he earned during his time as a Marine, Hackman enrolled in journalism at the University of Illinois. He dropped out after six months to study radio announcing in New York.
After working at stations in Florida and his hometown of Danville, he returned to New York to study painting at the Art Students League. Hackman switched again to enter an acting course at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Back in New York, he found work as a doorman and truck driver, among other jobs, while waiting for a break as an actor, sweating it out in the early 1960s with such fellow hopefuls as onetime roommates Robert Duvall and Dustin Hoffman.
Breakout in Bonnie and Clyde
Summer work at a theatre on Long Island led to roles off-Broadway. Hackman began attracting attention from Broadway producers, and he received good notices in such plays such as Poor Richard, in 1964 with Alan Bates.
Small roles in film and television ensued, including a brief turn in 1964's Lilith, which starred Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg.
When Beatty began work on Bonnie and Clyde, which he produced and starred in, he remembered Hackman and cast him as bank robber Clyde Barrow's outgoing brother. Pauline Kael in The New Yorker called Hackman's work "a beautifully controlled performance, the best in the film," and he was nominated for an Academy Award as supporting actor.
Hackman's first starring film role came in 1970 with I Never Sang for My Father, as a man struggling to deal with a failed relationship with his dying father, Melvyn Douglas. Even though he had the central part, Hackman was nominated for an Oscar as supporting actor and Douglas as lead.
Jackie Gleason, Steve McQueen and Peter Boyle were among the actors considered for Doyle in The French Connection. Hackman was a minor star at the time, seemingly without the flamboyant personality that the role demanded. The actor himself feared that he was miscast.
One of the first scenes in The French Connection required Hackman to slap around a suspect. The actor realized he had failed to achieve the intensity that the scene required, and he asked director William Friedkin for another chance.
The scene was filmed at the end of the shooting, by which time Hackman had immersed himself in the loose-cannon character of Doyle. Friedkin would recall needing 37 takes to get the scene right.
The film was part of a flurry of work in the early 1970s for Hackman, including as a corrupt cop in Cisco Pike, musician Kris Kristofferson's first featured film role, the disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure, and Night Moves, featuring a young Melanie Griffith.
Persuaded to join Unforgiven by Eastwood
Hackman also resisted the role which brought him his second Oscar. When Clint Eastwood first offered him Little Bill Daggett, the corrupt town boss in Unforgiven, Hackman — who had played villains before, including Lex Luthor in Superman — turned it down. But he realized that Eastwood was planning to make a different kind of western, a critique, not a celebration of violence.
The film won him the Academy Award as best supporting actor of 1992.
"To his credit, and my joy, he talked me into it," Hackman said of Eastwood during an interview with the American Film Institute.
For a time he seemed to be in a contest with Michael Caine for the world's busiest Oscar winner. In 2001 alone, he appeared in The Mexican, Heartbreakers, Heist, The Royal Tenenbaums and Behind Enemy Lines.
In 1956, Hackman married Fay Maltese, a bank teller he had met at a YMCA dance in New York. They had a son, Christopher, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Leslie, but divorced in the mid-1980s.
With files from Kevin Maimann, Makda Ghebreslassie and Griffin Jaeger