Culture reporter
Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman, his wife and their dog appear to have been dead for some time when they were found in different rooms of their home in the US state of New Mexico, according to police.
Hackman, 95, was discovered dead in a side room near the kitchen of the house in Santa Fe, while Betsy Arakawa, a 63-year-old classical pianist, was found dead in a bathroom.
The county sheriff’s office said there was no sign that any of them had been shot or had other types of wounds. The fire department detected no indication of a carbon monoxide leak, according to a search warrant.
In a wide-ranging career, Hackman won two Academy Awards for his work on The French Connection and Unforgiven.
Warning: This story contains details some readers may find upsetting
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office said: “On 26 February, 2025, at approximately 1:45pm, Santa Fe County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to an address on Old Sunset Trail in Hyde Park where Gene Hackman, his wife Betsy Arakawa, and a dog were found deceased.”
According to the search warrant, the couple’s German Shepherd dog was found dead in a bathroom closet near to Ms Arakawa.
A police detective who responded to the scene said that they believed the couple had been dead for some time because Ms Arakawa’s remains showed “body decomposition” and “mummification” in the hands and feet.
“The male decedent also showed obvious signs of death, similar and consistent with the female decedent,” said the search warrant.
Hackman won the best actor Oscar for his role as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in William Friedkin’s 1971 thriller The French Connection, and another for best supporting actor for playing Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s Western film Unforgiven in 1992.
A relative latecomer to Hollywood, Hackman’s breathrough came in his thirties, when he was nominated for an Oscar for portraying Buck Barrow in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde – opposite Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway – and again for I Never Sang for My Father in 1970.
Both films saw him recognised in the supporting actor category. He was also nominated for best leading actor in 1988 for playing the agent in Mississippi Burning.
‘Gene Hackman could play anyone’
Much-celebrated actor Hackman played more than 100 roles in total, including supervillain Lex Luthor in the Christopher Reeve-starring Superman movies in the 1970s and 1980s.
Hackman acted opposite many Hollywood heavyweights including Al Pacino in 1973’s Scarecrow, Gene Wilder in 1974’s Young Frankenstein and Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in 1981’s Reds.
He also starred in the hit movies Runaway Jury, Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation.
Coppola led the tributes to the late star on Thursday, calling him “a great artist”. In a statement posted on Instagram, the director wrote: “Gene Hackman a great actor, inspiring and magnificent in his work and complexity. I mourn his loss, and celebrate his existence and contribution.”
Valerie Perrine, who featured alongside Hackman in Superman (1978) as his character’s on-screen girlfriend Eve Teschmacher, described the late actor as “a genius” and one of the “greatest to grace the silver screen”.
She posted on X: “His performances are legendary. His talent will be missed. Goodbye my sweet Lex Till we meet again.”
Star Trek actor George Takei posted that “we have lost one of the true giants of the screen”.
“Gene Hackman could play anyone, and you could feel a whole life behind it,” he wrote. “He could be everyone and no one, a towering presence or an everyday Joe. That’s how powerful an actor he was. He will be missed, but his work will live on forever.”
Slumdog Millionaire star Anil Kapoor also called Hackman a “genius” performer. “A true legend whose legacy will live on,” he wrote.
As well as his Oscar wins, Hackman also collected two Baftas, four Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
He took a comedic turn playing a conservative senator in 1996’s The Birdcage alongside Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, who starred as a gay couple.
His last big-screen appearance came as Monroe Cole in Welcome to Mooseport in 2004, after which he stepped back from Hollywood for a quieter life in New Mexico.
‘Actors had to be handsome’
Born in California in 1930, Hackman’s family moved frequently, and after lying about his age at 16, he enlisted in the US Marine Corps serving for four-and-a-half years.
He was stationed in China, Hawaii and Japan before being discharged in 1951.
Following his military service, Hackman lived and worked in a variety jobs in New York, and studied journalism and television production at the University of Illinois, before deciding to drop out and move back to California to pursue his childhood acting dream.
He joined the Pasadena Playhouse in California, where he befriended a young Dustin Hoffman.
“I suppose I wanted to be an actor from the time I was about 10, maybe even younger than that,” Hackman once said. “Recollections of early movies that I had seen and actors that I admired like James 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.”
He added that he “wanted to act” but had “always been convinced that actors “had to be handsome”.
“That came from the days when Errol Flynn was my idol. I’d come out of a theatre and be startled when I looked in a mirror because I didn’t look like Flynn. I felt like him.”
Getty ImagesHackman moved back to New York in 1963, performing in Off-Broadway productions – including at the Music Box Theatre for the comedy Any Wednesday – and smaller TV roles.
But he began to really make his name in the 1970s, becoming a leading man as New York City detective Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle in The French Connection.
From then on he became a fixture on the big screen in the likes of 1972 disaster film The Poseidon Adventure.
He also appeared in Children From Their Games at the former Morosco Theatre, Poor Richard at Helen Hayes Theatre and The Natural Look at Longacre Theatre, before later returning in 1992 to perform Death And The Maiden at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.
Hackman and his first wife, Faye Maltese, were together for 30 years and raised three children before getting divorced in 1986.
In his later years, he and his second wife, Betsy stayed out of the spotlight, but made a rare public appearance together at the 2003 Golden Globe Awards, where he won the Cecil B. deMille award.
‘Not going to act any longer’
In 2008 he told Reuters that despite the lack of any official announcement, he was “not going to act any longer”.
“I’ve been told not to say that over the last few years, in case some real wonderful part comes up, but I really don’t want to do it any longer.”
He also explained he was focusing his attentions away from the big screen and towards his quieter, calmer passion for writing novels.
“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,” he once said.
“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.”
