As /Film’s Jeremy Smith has argued before, Gene Hackman was the best actor ever. With Hackman’s death at 95 on February 26, the world is busy remembering the man and his best movies, all of which feature great Hackman roles that are so defined by the actor’s presence that it would be very difficult to envision anyone else playing his characters.
If you asked Hackman himself, however, he wasn’t always the best fit for the roles he’s remembered by. In fact, the actor went as far as thinking that his arguably most famous role, Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in “The French Connection” (1971), was not a very good fit for him. Here’s how he described this somewhat surprising view in an interview with Cigar Aficionado:
“When we first started, I was pretty unsure of myself, because [Doyle] had to be pretty ruthless. In the early parts of the filming, I just wasn’t up to it. When we shot a scene with the drug pusher that I chase down the street in the first scene of the movie, I wasn’t very good; it was just kind of weak. And I went to [director William Friedkin] and I said, ‘I don’t know if I can do this or not.’ This was like the first or second day of filming, and he would have been in big trouble if, after having gone to bat for me, I couldn’t have done the work. And he said, ‘We’ll put it aside for now and continue on and maybe we can reshoot the scene later.’ And that’s what happened.”
Despite his uncertainty, Hackman created a legendary character
Gene Hackman was one of the best tough guy actors in the world, if not outright the greatest. As such, it’s strange to find out that he found it hard to tap into the mindset of his “The French Connection” character at first, but then again, everyone has to start somewhere. Besides, it seems that some of the actor’s initial “The French Connection” issues had to do with the way he was cast. As he puts it, he ended up in the movie as a sort of compromise selection who had just enough name recognition for the studio to accept him, but who was also enough of a fresh face for William Friedkin to give him the stamp of approval. As Hackman told Cigar Aficionado:
“‘The French Connection’ was just a lucky break for me. The studio wanted a star in the film and the director, Billy Friedkin, wanted an unknown. And so I fell into a funny kind of happy medium for everybody because I had done some films, I had been nominated for ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ a couple of years before, and I still wasn’t known to the public very well. I’ll be forever indebted to Billy Friedkin for not only giving me the opportunity, but for kind of putting up with me in a lot of ways.”
Of course, history was quick to prove that Friedkin’s trust in Hackman was as justified as the actor’s nerves were unwarranted. “The French Connection” was a complete success, and remains beloved by the critics and audiences alike. As anyone who’s seen the film knows, Hackman’s work as Popeye Doyle anchors the entire excellent movie, and in 1972 he bagged a Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar for his work.