(Credits: Far Out / 20th Century Fox)
Sat 31 January 2026 21:15, UK
Like many actors, Gene Hackman was susceptible to the odd paycheque gig. However, because he was one of his generation’s best and one of American cinema’s all-time greats, even the roles he played for no other reason than the money were elevated by the sheer force of his gravitas.
Take Hoosiers, for example. David Anspaugh’s film is regarded as one of Hollywood’s finest-ever sports flicks, Hackman was only offered the part of Norman Dale because Jack Nicholson couldn’t do it, he only played the part because he was “desperate for money,” and he knocked it out of the park.
Then there’s The Poseidon Adventure, a big-budget and effects-heavy blockbuster that made the star feel like he was selling out. And yet, it’s one of the top-tier efforts to emerge from the 1970s disaster boom, won two Academy Awards, and he hardly disgraced himself with his performance.
Richard Donner’s Superman fits the exact same bill; Hackman admitted that the main driving force behind his decision to bring Lex Luthor to scenery-chewing life was a couple of million dollars, and the end result was a $300 million hit at the box office and one of the most influential comic book adaptations ever made.
That’s a pretty good batting average for someone who had no emotional attachment to the material, but that was Hackman in a nutshell; even if he appeared in a disappointing, dismal, or disastrous picture, he usually managed to emerge unscathed because he had the ability to elevate the weakest material.
Of course, his success rate was hardly 100%, and it’s telling that the one movie he confessed that not even he was able to save happens to be the worst-reviewed entry in his entire filmography. His comedy chops were somewhat underrated, as The Birdcage and The Royal Tenenbaums showed, but pairing him with Dan Aykroyd in 1989’s Loose Cannons was the wrong call.
Hackman plays the straight man in the buddy cop caper to Aykroyd’s detective, who suffers from dissociative identity disorder. As they investigate a case, the latter’s continued switching between personalities continues to exasperate his partner, and barely a single soul gave the slightest shit.
“I honestly felt at the time that I could make that work, with Dan Aykroyd being such a funny guy,” he told Cowboys & Indians. “But there’s only so much you can do as an actor. If it isn’t there, if the story isn’t there, if the plot isn’t there, if there isn’t something to really get involved in, it’s difficult.”
The two-time Oscar winner never starred in anything that fared worse among critics than Loose Cannons, and while it’s admirable that he thought he could apply his usual Midas touch to a script that was never up to his standard, even someone as talented as Hackman can’t work miracles.
Related Topics