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!
As a young man,Hackman attended a showing of the movie "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) and was impressed by the performance of Marlon Brando due to his naturalism and the fact that he didn't look like what a movie star typically looked like in the 1950s.After exiting the theater,he told his father that he wanted to be an actor.
Quote Gene Hackman:"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".
He is also known as Eugene Alder.
For his role as Lex Luthor in the Superman movies,he didn't want go bald.So he was allowed to wear wigs instead,and was convinced to wear a bald cap in only a few scenes.
Quote Gene Hackman:I suppose I wanted to be an actor from the time I was about ten,maybe even younger than that. Recollections of early movies that I had seen and actors that I admired like Jimmy Cagney,Errol Flynn,those kind of romantic action guys.When I saw those actors,I felt I could do that.But I was in New York for about eight years before I had a job.I sold ladies shoes,polished leather furniture,drove a truck.I think that if you have it in you and you want it bad enough you can do it.
Appeared on "Larry King Live" on July 7th,2004.Larry King was surprised to find out that Hackman had no movies lined up, and Hackman replied by saying that he thinks it is the end of his career.
Suffered a severe heart attack in 1990, and underwent successful angioplasty surgery.
While a struggling actor in New York City,he worked as a soda jerk in a pharmacy and as a furniture mover.
Enjoys painting and writing fiction.
Reportedly turned down the role of Randall Patrick McMurphy in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"(1975).
Says watching his own films make him terribly nervous.
Gene is the voice of the Oppenheimer Funds commercials (2006).
He is the voice of Lowe's Home Improvement commercials. (2006)
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