Gene Hackman, a decade-spanning Hollywood legend with two Oscar victories for his roles in William Friedkin’s 1971 classic The French Connection and Clint Eastwood‘s 1992 western Unforgiven, has died at age 95.

The actor, his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 64, and a dog were reportedly found dead on Wednesday inside a Santa Fe, N.M., home where they’d been living, according to the New York Times. The publication indicated that authorities noted that foul play was not suspected in the couple’s deaths.

Hackman’s rep and Santa Fe police tell Entertainment Weekly that on February 26, 2025, at approximately 1:45 p.m., Santa Fe County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to an address on Old Sunset Trail in Hyde Park where Gene Hackman, 95, and his wife Betsy Arakawa, 64, and a dog were found deceased. 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.

On top of his pair of Academy Award wins, Hackman’s career as an actor included three additional Oscar nominations, including for roles in Mississippi Burning, I Never Sang for My Father, and the influential industry hit Bonnie and Clyde.

He also appeared in several beloved commercial projects as well, including as the villainous Lex Luthor in several Superman franchise movies and in Wes Anderson’s comedy favorite The Royal Tenenbaums.

The cliché about Hackman was that he was the “everyman movie star.” Everyone called him that: Directors, journalists, peers. In an era of rumpled, ordinary-looking leading men, Hackman was extolled as the most rumpled, the most ordinary — a mid-level manager who somehow got elevated to the Oscar podium.

All you have to do is watch his Oscar-winning turns in The French Connection and Unforgiven; his sly scene-stealing in Young Frankenstein (1974) and Get Shorty (1995); the subterranean pathos of professional eavesdropper Harry Caul in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974). Watch him in anything, really. The filmography seethes with uncommonness.

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We never knew what he would do next. A hallmark of his performances was that hesitant chuckle, a nervous heh-heh-heh ready to pivot into menace or vulnerability, and it was the not-knowing that seduced us — that, and the sense that Hackman was as unsure as we were. He lived for the character and the scene, and he rarely watched his finished films. 

Hackman was born in 1930 in California but grew up in Danville, Ill. At age 16, he lied about his age and joined the Marines. A service stint as a radio announcer provided him with the first taste of public performance, but Hackman’s gift took years to focus. He eventually landed at the Pasadena Playhouse in California along with a fellow misfit named Dustin Hoffman. The pair played bongos in emulation of Marlon Brando and were dubbed the “two least likely to succeed.” Hackman wasn’t invited back.

He next drifted to New York, where he began his true apprenticeship under acting teacher George Morrison and palled around with Hoffman and a young player named Robert Duvall. For 10 years, Hackman studied acting and worked as a doorman, furniture mover, women’s shoe salesman, Howard Johnson’s counterman: everyman jobs. He married a pretty secretary named Fay Maltese (he’s survived by their three children, as well as his second wife, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, whom he wed in 1991). Honing his gift for comedy at an improv troupe called the Premise, Hackman began to land small parts on TV dramas, finally getting noticed in a supporting role in the hit stage comedy Any Wednesday.

His turn as a shifty male nurse in Lilith (1964) wasn’t Hackman’s first movie part — that was a bit in 1961’s Mad Dog Coll — but it caught the notice of star Warren Beatty, and when Hackman was fired from his role as Mr. Robertson in The Graduate for having (in director Mike Nichols’ words) too “much juice and vitality,” Beatty tapped him to play Clyde Barrow’s dimwit brother Buck in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). A supporting actor nomination followed, and Hackman was on his way.

Already he had a penchant for taking any part that came along — Hackman’s professional insecurity was always at war with his talents — but after a four-year run of mixed-bag roles, he was cast in The French Connection as gutter-mouthed narcotics detective Popeye Doyle. The role’s brutality didn’t sit well with the star. “I found out very quickly that I’m not a violent person,” Hackman later said. If so, he faked it all the way to a Best Actor Oscar.

With The Conversation, Night Moves (1975), and the underrated Scarecrow (1973), Hackman hit his artistic peak, but the latter film’s commercial failure took the wind out of his sails. “I thought, ‘Aw, hell, I’ll just take anything that’s offered,’” he told a reporter. Though he starred in hits like The Poseidon Adventure (1974) and Superman (1978), Hackman spent the remainder of the ‘70s in a somewhat frustrated state, focusing more on racecar driving and other pursuits than acting. In 1977, he unofficially retired and committed himself to painting.

The comeback was sweet, though: Lured out of hiding by Beatty and Reds (1981), Hackman embarked on a period of smart, mature work: a steelworker undergoing divorce in Twice in a Lifetime (1985, and it must have stung; he and Maltese split the following year), a striving basketball coach in Hoosiers (1986), a murderous secretary of defense in No Way Out (1987), Oscar nominated for his FBI agent in Mississippi Burning (1988), and the crowning glory of his Little Bill Daggett in Eastwood’s Unforgiven, a villain as likable as he is sadistic.

Hackman appeared in five movies in 1988; clearly, something had to give. It was his heart; he underwent surgery in 1990 and, after the win for Unforgiven, he started to take it easier. This is a relative statement: Hackman made more movies in the ‘90s than most of the handsome young pups on the magazine covers, and he’s the best thing about The Firm (1993), Get Shorty, Enemy of the State (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), and Runaway Jury (2003), the last of which finally paired him with his old bongo buddy Dustin Hoffman.

Hackman painted, co-wrote a 1990 novel, and had a profitable second career doing commercial voiceovers, but never went behind the camera. He came close once, buying the rights to The Silence of the Lambs in the mid ‘80s with an eye to starring and directing, but dropped the project, worried he was involved in too many violent movies.

Above all, he had the truly uncommon gift of mining his roles for the stray moment when you see the human being beneath — not the “everyman,” but this man, in this situation. “I look for something that isn’t written down,” Gene Hackman once said. In movie after movie, he found it.