Police are investigating but do not believe anyone else was involved after Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman, his wife, and their dog were found dead in their New Mexico home on Thursday.
According to Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Denise Avila, Hackman, 95, his wife Betsy Arakawa, 65, and their dog were discovered when deputies checked on them around 1:45 p.m.
Hackman’s daughters, Elizabeth and Leslie, along with his granddaughter Annie, confirmed the deaths in a statement 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 asked neighborhood security to check on the couple after getting no response at their home. A security officer looked through a window, saw Arakawa on the ground, and called 911.
According to a search warrant obtained by CBC News, officers found the front door slightly open but saw no signs of forced entry. Inside, they discovered a man and a woman in different rooms, appearing to have collapsed suddenly. Arakawa was found in a bathroom near a space heater, while Hackman was in the entryway with a cane nearby, officials said.
Officers also found one dead dog and two healthy dogs—one inside and one outside the home.
A gas company is testing the gas line in and around the house, but detectives told the fire department they saw no signs of a carbon monoxide leak or poisoning. The results of carbon monoxide and toxicology tests are still pending.
The affidavit said there were no signs of injuries or wounds, but the situation was “suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation.”
The sheriff’s office later said the first autopsy results showed no external injuries on either person.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza told reporters that the two had been dead “for quite a while” before officers found them. He also said the dog that died was 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 was about two weeks ago.
Hackman Known For Diverse Range
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza told reporters that Hackman and Arakawa had been dead “for quite a while” before officers found them. He also said the dog that died was inside a kennel.
The worker who called 911 and another worker told authorities they rarely saw Hackman and Arakawa and had last spoken to them about two weeks ago.
Hackman moved to the Santa Fe area in the 1980s and was often seen around town. In the 1990s, he served as a board member of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, according to the local newspaper, The New Mexican.
Even though he was humble and not flashy, Hackman was highly respected in Hollywood. He was seen as the successor to Spencer Tracy—an actor who played ordinary people, was admired by other actors, and avoided fame. He focused on doing his job well and let others worry about his public image.
In his first ten years in film, Hackman showed his wide acting range. He had a breakout role in Bonnie and Clyde, starred in the comedy Young Frankenstein, played a drifter in the road movie Scarecrow with Al Pacino, and portrayed a secretive surveillance expert in The Conversation, a film released during the Watergate era.
Later in his career, Hackman easily moved between serious movies like Mississippi Burning, Hoosiers, and Crimson Tide, and comedies like Get Shorty, The Birdcage, and The Royal Tenenbaums.
“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 he wasn’t working on movies, Hackman enjoyed painting, stunt flying, stock car racing, and deep-sea diving. He retired from Hollywood early, even though he started his career later than most.
Hackman was 35 when he got a role in Bonnie and Clyde and over 40 when he won his first Oscar. He played Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, a tough New York City detective, in The French Connection, a 1971 thriller about stopping drug smugglers in Manhattan.
Besides attending awards shows, Hackman was rarely seen at Hollywood events and retired about 20 years ago. His last big movie role was in the 2004 comedy Welcome to Mooseport, which was filmed in Port Perry, Ontario.
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.”
A Strong And Reliable Star In American Movies
Globe and Mail entertainment writer Johanna Schneller told CBC News that Hackman will be remembered as one of the greatest actors.
“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 that when she worked at GQ magazine in the 1980s and 1990s, almost every actor she interviewed mentioned 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 playing many different types 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 pianist trained in classical music, in the mid-1980s while she was working part-time at a gym in California. They soon moved in together and later settled in Santa Fe by the end of the decade. They got married in 1991.
Arakawa grew up in Honolulu and started playing piano at a young age. When she was just 11, 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 earning a degree in social sciences and communication from the University of Southern California, Arakawa played with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, now called the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra.
After moving to Santa Fe with Hackman, she helped start Pandora’s, a home furnishing store, in 2001.
‘Dysfunctional’ Family Life
Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, and grew up in Danville, Illinois, where his father worked as a newspaper pressman. His parents often argued, and Hackman found comfort in movie theaters, looking up to rebellious actors like Errol Flynn and James Cagney as his role models.
When Hackman was 13, his father waved goodbye, drove away, and never came back. At 16, he “suddenly got the itch to get out.” He lied about his age and joined the U.S. Marines.
In his early 30s, before becoming a successful actor, Hackman’s mother died in a fire caused by her cigarette.
“Dysfunctional families have sired a lot of pretty good actors,” he observed during a 2001 interview with the New York Times.
His first experience in show business came when he overcame his fear of speaking into a microphone and became a disc jockey and news announcer for his military unit’s radio station.
While in the Marines, he earned his high school diploma and later enrolled in journalism at the University of Illinois. However, he left after six months to study radio announcing in New York.
After working at radio stations in Florida and his hometown of Danville, Hackman went back to New York to study painting at the Art Students League. He later changed his focus and joined an acting class at the Pasadena Playhouse.
When he returned to New York, he took jobs as a doorman and truck driver while waiting for his big break in acting. In the early 1960s, he struggled alongside other aspiring actors, including his former roommates Robert Duvall and Dustin Hoffman.
Breakthrough In Bonnie And Clyde
During the summer, Hackman worked at a theater on Long Island, which led to roles in off-Broadway plays. Broadway producers started noticing him, and he got good reviews for plays like Poor Richard in 1964, where he performed with Alan Bates.
He then landed small roles in movies and TV shows, including a short appearance in the 1964 film Lilith, which starred Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg.
When Warren Beatty started working on Bonnie and Clyde as both producer and star, he remembered Hackman and gave him the role of Clyde Barrow’s outgoing brother.
Pauline Kael from The New Yorker praised Hackman’s acting, calling it “a beautifully controlled performance, the best in the film.” He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Hackman’s first lead role in a movie came in 1970 with I Never Sang for My Father, where he played a man trying to cope with a broken relationship with his dying father, played by Melvyn Douglas. Even though Hackman was the main character, he was nominated for an Oscar as a supporting actor, while Douglas was nominated as the lead.
Many actors, including Jackie Gleason, Steve McQueen, and Peter Boyle, were considered for the role of Doyle in The French Connection. At the time, Hackman was not a big star and didn’t seem to have the bold personality the role needed. Even he worried that he wasn’t the right choice.
One of the first scenes in The French Connection required Hackman to rough up a suspect. He felt that he didn’t bring enough intensity to the scene and asked director William Friedkin if he could try again.
By the time they filmed the scene at the end of production, Hackman had fully embraced the wild and unpredictable character of Doyle. Friedkin later said it took 37 takes to get it right.
In the early 1970s, Hackman was in several movies. He played a corrupt cop in Cisco Pike, which was musician Kris Kristofferson’s first big film role. He also starred in the disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure and Night Moves, which featured a young Melanie Griffith.
Eastwood Convinced Him To Join Unforgiven
Hackman at first didn’t want to take the role that won him his second Oscar. When Clint Eastwood offered him the part of Little Bill Daggett, the corrupt town boss in Unforgiven, Hackman said no. He had played villains before, including Lex Luthor in Superman, and wasn’t sure about the role. But he soon realized that Eastwood wanted to make a different kind of western—one that criticized violence instead of celebrating it.
The movie earned Hackman the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1992.
“To his credit, and my joy, he talked me into it,” Hackman said about Eastwood in an interview with the American Film Institute.
For a while, it seemed like Hackman and Michael Caine were competing to be the busiest Oscar winner. In 2001 alone, Hackman starred in five movies: The Mexican, Heartbreakers, Heist, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Behind Enemy Lines.
In 1956, Hackman married Fay Maltese, a bank teller he met at a YMCA dance in New York. They had a son, Christopher, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Leslie, but they divorced in the mid-1980s.
