What Can Gene Hackman Teach Us?

Any movie starring Gene Hackman would come with a guarantee. An authentic and gravelly-voiced character was about to occupy the screen–sometimes funny, often tough, usually obstinate, always vulnerable. His characters were heroic yet flawed, aspirational yet familiar. For nearly 40 years, a Gene Hackman film meant the viewer was in for a great ride. His iconic films include The French Connection, The Poseidon Adventure, The Conversation, Young Frankenstein, Superman, Hoosiers, Mississippi Burning, Unforgiven, The Birdcage, the Royal Tenenbaums, and so many more. 

One would think that an artist with such obvious gifts, with such a massive output of work, must have begun his career at an early age. Turns out that the public wouldn’t even know his name until he was 37. His long and circuitous route to creative and professional success began with an unsettled childhood. His family frequently moved, his parents divorced when he was 13, and for a period of time he lived with his English-born grandmother in Danville, Illinois. 

After his sophomore year of high school when Hackman was 16, he lied about his age and enlisted in the Marine Corps, serving for four and a half years as a field radio operator. After his discharge, he moved to New York City and worked at various jobs. Under the G.I. Bill, he enrolled at University of Illinois to study journalism and television production, but left without graduating and moved back to California, the state where he was born.

It wasn’t until he was 26, with plenty of life experience already behind him, that Hackman began to learn the craft of acting. At the Pasadena Playhouse, he befriended another aspiring actor by the name of Dustin Hoffman, but both were seen by their classmates as outsiders and under-talented, and were voted “least likely to succeed.” 

Hackman moved back to New York City, and through the 1960s shared cramped apartments with fellow struggling actors Hoffman and Robert Duvall. To support himself between acting gigs, Hackman worked at a Howard Johnson restaurant where he encountered an instructor from the Pasadena Playhouse who told him that his job proved that he “wouldn’t amount to anything.” A Marine officer who saw him working as a doorman told him, “Hackman, you’re a sorry son of a bitch.”

But Hackman used rejection as a motivator. “It was more psychological warfare, because I wasn’t going to let those f*****s get me down,” he wrote. “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.” Motivated and improving at his craft, he began to get bit parts in movies, television, and theatre, which led to a few larger roles and successes. His breakout film role came when he was cast as Buck Barrow opposite Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde, for which he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. 

What can we learn from Gene Hackman? That recognition isn’t delivered to us, we have to earn it through hard work. That dropping out of college doesn’t necessarily doom us to a lifetime of failure. That repeated failures can be great preparation for enormous success. That life’s most difficult challenges may be exactly the fuel we need to break free. Aim high, be prepared for inevitable setbacks, and know in your bones that those setbacks are exactly what you need to become the best you can possibly be.

(Much of the above information comes from Wikipedia.)