Dysfunctional families have sired a number of pretty good actors.
I do not like assassins, or men of low character.
I was trained to be an actor, not a star. I was trained to play roles,
not to deal with fame and agents and lawyers and the press.
If I start to become a star, I'll lose contact with the normal guys
I play best.
If you look at yourself as a star, you've already lost something in
the portrayal of any human being.
It really costs me a lot emotionally to watch myself on screen.
I think of myself, and feel like I'm quite young, and then I look at
this old man with the baggy chins and the tired eyes and the
receding hairline and all that.
The difference between a hero and a coward is one step sideways.
You have a powerful weapon working for you. For you there is no
tomorrow and that makes you all very dangerous people!
(On the movie, The Graduate) That was a painful experience.
I was supposed to play Mr. Robinson and I was fired during
rehearsals. I think it was my own fault. I just wasn't capable
then of giving the director what he wanted. That's why I believe
it takes ten years to become an actor. Doesn't really matter
what age you start. There's no substitute for experience.
I got fired, I think, because I just didn't fulfill the director's
and the writer's idea of what the part should've been. In rehearsals,
I do a lot of searching around, I try not to perform and I really feel
confident in what I'm doing. I mean, you can go first day and perform
and probably won't go further than that. But the way that we were all
trained in the Fifties and Sixties, you needed to keep searching and so,
I was doing that, and they decided that I was just taking too much time.
I was trained to be an actor, not a star. I was trained to play roles, not to
deal with fame and agents and lawyers and the press.
It really costs me a lot emotionally to watch myself on-screen. I think
of myself, and feel like I'm quite young, and then I look at this old
man with the baggy chins and the tired eyes and the receding hairline
and all that. If I start to become a star, I'll lose contact with the
normal guys I play best.
The difference between a hero and a coward is one step sideways.
Dysfunctional families have sired a number of pretty good actors.
I came to New York when I was 25,and I worked at Howard Johnson's
in Times Square,where I did the door in this completely silly uniform.
Before that,I had been a student at the Pasadena Playhouse,where I had
been awarded the least likely to succeed prize,along with my pal Dustin
Hoffman, which was a big reason we set off for New York together. Out of
nowhere,this teacher I totally despised at the Pasadena Playhouse suddenly
walked by HoJo's and came right up into my face and shouted,'See,Hackman,I
told you that you would never amount to anything!'I felt 1 inch tall.
I wanted to act,but I'd always been convinced that actors had to be handsome.
When I'm acting I really feel that I'm doing what I was
set on Earth to do, the only thing that I really know
how to do well.
I hate watching myself on the screen. I don't even notice
my acting. I just look at that pudding face and think Oh God,
I look like my grandfather.
(On acting) You can't really think unless you relax. Acting
is thinking and feeling.
I always thought of films in those days as just a way to make
some money, so I could live. A lot of NY actors at that time
considered film to be something less thatn good acting...that it
was a way to steal some money - so many weeks in California, hotel
expenses paid and back home again. Great! Nobody would ever see the
film and you'd come back to NY and go on with your life. I did not
know anything about film technique and I did not much care.
You need to stay on top of it (racing and flying) and once your reflexes go
you're out. Flying is the kind of sport that if you don't stay current
you can get yourself in trouble.
I was trained to be an actor, not a star. I was trained to
play roles, not to deal with fame and agents and lawyers
and the press.
You start looking at your mortality and you say, hey I gotta start taking
care of myself a little bit here. So I've tried to do that.
I worry about my double chin. I know I'm not a leading
man, but I still worry.
It's something that I can do (painting) without having 90 people standing
around and watching. I've always painted. It's always been a real love of
mine. I don't like showing my work because I like to keep it private. It's just
something that I can do that I can call my own.
I'm a prolific film actor, to date I have made over 78 movies!
If you were to rent them on DVD and place them end to end you'd
have 78 rented DVDs laid end to end.
Warren (Beatty) is an amazing man. He has this playboy image, but
underneath he's a shrewd, busy film-maker. There were many occasions
on which Beatty's tenacity would be sorely tried, but it was never
found wanting.
I loved the Kennedy idea and really don't know why. I just
like the idea that there was a young man who seemed to
care about us. Then I met Bobby Kennedy a couple of
months before he was killed and I was so impressed.
After he was killed, I felt I didn't want to get involved
politically any more.
I go terribly bored with the character (Buck Barrow - Bonnie and Clyde)
by the time the film was over because of the accent. It was so heavy
that it depressed me. I had been working for several years in NY and
I suddenly gotten back to where I was saying goin' and comin' and that
kind of thing, and you get tired of a character.
I found a lot of people would defer to him (Burt Lancaster)
in ways that - I was from the theatre, you know - that I'd
wonder, why don't they argue with him a little big? What,
is he gonna punch then out or something? No, not
necessarily, because he's a bright guy.But it's just that
you reach a certain level and people get frightened of your
money or your power, or both, you know. And when I
found myself doing that, when I found myself getting my
way without somebody really pushing against me, I really
started getting worried. Because I think that's one of the
really dangerous things, when you get in a certain position
of being able to say just anything, and people say: "Yeah,
right, bring it in." That's bad.
It was the first time in my career that I could see my life mapped out
in front of me. I should have been delighted, but in fact I went through
a very depressing period. I had subsisted on a day-to-day level for so
long, quite liking the idea that I didn't know what I was going to do
next. Suddenly I had a good salary, three firm jobs and a future-I found
that surprisingly tought to adjust to.
(1978 Film Illustrated interview)
Film acting was still just a way to make some bread, but when Bonnie
and Clyde opened ti was an enormous hit. One day I was walking through
Greenich Village and a group of people started shouting across to me,
calling me "Buck", which was the name of the character I played. I can't
tell you how startling that was to me. I had never realized the true
power of motion pictures until that moment. But after Bonnie and Clyde
burst, I grabbed everything that came along. I was terrified the bubble
was going to burst and it was all going to end.
(1978 Film Illustrated interview)
I really didn't appreciate movies until I got into pictures myself. Until
I really understood waht it was to be a motion picture actor, and what it
takes, and what nuances you can use, and about underplaying. I never really
appreciated it until then. It was like comedy. I wasn't really aware until
my last two years in NY, when I started doing a lot of comedy, how much
expertiase and real judgement it takes to do real comedy, rather than
drama. Because drama in many ways is arbitrary: you can choose not to cry
in a scene were everyone else is crying, and that's a choice. And you can
defend that choice to your death, saying that it's a character who is cut
off, a character who is doing a whole different number. That's defendable.
But in comedy, if the laugh doesn't come, there's no way you can defend that.
(1978 Film Comment interview)
I just knew I could; I really did. Every Saturday if I could get a quarter
to go [to the movies], I'd go, and when I'd leave, I'd look in the mirror
and be stunned that I didn't look like James Cagney. I'd be so in tune
with what he was doing - I'd become that guy - that a real period of
depression would follow. [I'd think], 'How am I gonna be that guy if I
don't look like that guy?' I finally realized that I could just be me, and
if I was good enough, that would work.
--Hackman to Premiere magazine on how he always knew he could act
I like to work. But I don't like the business. All the backstabbing.
The uncomfortable atmosphere on some sets. But it's a trade-off.
--Hackman quoted in USA Today, October 11, 1996.
I'm not saying he's the only great American actor, but there's no better
American actor alive today. --director Robert Benton (who guided Hackman
in Twilight) quoted by Mark Kennedy of the Associated Press,
March 11, 1998.
It becomes tougher and tougher for me to be directed. It isn't that I
feel I know everything. I just find myself being frustrated. I'm kind of
impossible. --Hackman to The New York Times Magazine,
March 19, 1989.
"The Royal Tenenbaums" director Wes Anderson on Hackman to the Los
Angeles Times (December 16, 2001): There's something very charismatic
in him, even when he's being his worst. There is something about him that
gives him a kind of gravity that is pretty rare. When they are playing a
scene where there is sadness or something gentle, he can be extremely
sad and gentle.
When they are playing a scene where they need to turn
on the rage, he can be scary at the drop of a hat. That is the way he will
attack a scene -- with everything he's got. December 16, 2001.
Things haven't always gone the way I've wanted, but look, I know I've
been very lucky. I've had more than my fair share of success, and the
audiences are still good to me. --Hackman on being considered a character
actor, to The Daily Telegraph, July 20, 2000. Three movies is slowing down
for me. I have that old thing in me from the early days when you couldn't
get a job and you want to take everything that's offered to you. I don't
know if I've ever had a moment when I 'made it' in Hollywood. I don't think
about that. -- Hackman on "Heist", Behind Enemy Lines and The Royal
Tenenbaums, released in quick succession in November and December of
2001, quoted in Boston Herald, December 21, 2001.
When you start having a little more confidence in what you do as an
actor, that starts to show, and then people start giving you more and
more confident characters to play, and then you become typed with that.
I'm not a tough guy at all--but I'm capable of playing some of those guys.
--Gene Hackman quoted in Us, March 1996.
On his status as an "Everyman", Hackman told the Associated Press
(March 11, 1998): One would like to think of oneself as being special,
as being artistic or romantic. Not common. I< mean, Everyman means common
in some kind of way. And common doesn't denote any kind of artistic talent
or artistic intent. So, in some ways, it sounds to me like a put-down. But
I don't think people necessarily mean it that way.
QUOTES ABOUT GENE FROM OTHER CELEBRITIES
AND OTHER SOURCES
Gene charges a lot of money for what he does. And he gives you your money's worth.
And that's the most you can say about anyone, whether they're a waiter or an actor.
--Clint Eastwood to USA Today, October 11, 1996.
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Gene is not your run-of-the-mill actor. He's really special, and right now he's at the top
of his form--almost a Zen-like place in his acting, where you don't see the effort.
--Sydney Pollack to Newsday, June 19, 1994.
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He is Everyman on the one hand, and yet, he's an Ubermensch. He has a broad spectrum
of gifts, a combination of sensitivity and toughness. That's why he's done what he's done.
--Warren Beatty to Premiere, February 1991.
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Gene Hackman, a fine character actor, deserves better parts
than the one he is given here, and audiences deserve better
than the careless ease he brings to it.
(Time -reviewing "Riot")
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MORE COMING SOON
