Oscar-winning US actor Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa have been found dead at their home on Sunset Trail in Santa Fe, New Mexico, along with the family dog.

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza confirmed the news to local media just after midnight on Wednesday 26 February, stating that whilst it was an active investigation at a very early stage, he did not suspect that foul play was a factor.

A neighbour had alerted authorities with a welfare concern and although no cause of death has been given, the Sheriff did add that they were “waiting on approval of a search warrant.”

The much celebrated actor enjoyed a career that spanned more than six decades, receiving two Academy Awards, two Baftas, four Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

He shot to fame in Bonnie and Clyde at the end of the 1960’s and went on to feature in more than 80 films including Lex Luthor in Superman movies, and starring roles in blockbusters such as: The French Connection, Unforgiven, Mississippi Burning, The Poseidon Adventure, The Firm, and Enemy Of The State.

He also starred in the hit movies Runaway Jury and The Conservation, as well as Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, with his last big screen appearance coming as Monroe Cole in Welcome to Mooseport, in 2004.

The retired actor had just turned 95 in late January, his wife Betsy was 63.

Previous heart issues

It was in 2004 that Gene Hackman announced that he was “done being an actor” and moved out of Los Angeles and headed for the quiet life in New Mexico.

It later emerged that the Oscar-award winning actor actually quit acting because of the severe stress he was under, which became too much to handle after he started to have issues with his heart.

In 1990 Hackman underwent angioplasty due to congestive heart failure. Dr Herbert Semler said at the time that he got to the actor in the “nick of time”, treating him for partial blockage of a coronary blood vessel.

He had been on holiday in Oregon when he began suffering chest pains and was rushed to hospital to have a balloon catheter inserted into his artery.

Rarely seen in public

The film legend wasn’t often seen in public during his final years, although he was seen last year grabbing some food with wife Betsy – a classical pianist who he married in 1991 – at a restaurant in Santa Fe, as he celebrated his 94th birthday. 

He had divorced his first wife, Faye Maltese, in 1986 after spending 30 years together and raising three children.

Told he would not make it as an actor

Born in California in January 1930, Hackman had enlisted in the army after lying about his age when only sixteen and served four-and-a-half years in the forces.

After his military service, he decided to enrol at the Pasadena Playhouse in California in the 1960’s where he became great friends with another budding actor – Dustin Hoffman.

Remarkably both the future super stars of the big screen were voted the “least likely to succeed”.

The right connections

His first movie role was in Lilith which had Warren Beatty in the starring role. Hackman left such an impression on Beatty with his performance that it was enough to get him cast in the role as his brother, Buck Barrow, in the 1967 hit, Bonnie and Clyde, that earned him an Oscar nomination.

Then he officially became a leading man, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his brilliant performance as New York City Detective Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle, in The French Connection.

Hackman would also win a second Oscar many years later for best supporting actor when playing sadistic Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s Western film Unforgiven in 1992.

Stunning performances

He was rarely out of work during a six decade career with an incredible list of movies, that allowed him to show of his immense talent with the variation of characters that he played.

His list of films include some absolute blockbusters such as Mississippi Burning – for which he was again nominated for a best actor Academy Award when portraying an FBI agent tasked with investigating the racist murder of black civil rights workers in the early 1960’s, in a typically powerful performance.

Others like the disaster film The Poseidon Adventure, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, and Superman: The Movie, playing supervillain Lex Luthor, really captured his ability to play diverse roles.

Reluctant starman

Hackman once said: “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; so 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.”

Adaptability the key

Nevertheless, his hard-edged screen persona made him ideal for the intelligent, but ruthless characters, in film adaptations of John Grisham novels – such as: The Firm and Runaway Jury – in which, for the first time, he and former flatmate Dustin Hoffman appeared on screen together.

Just a few of his many other movies were: The Chamber, Wyatt Earp, The Quick And The Dead, Crimson Tide, Get Shorty, Absolute Power, The Birdcage, Enemy Of The State, Behind Enemy Lines, Heist, and The Royal Tenenbaums.

True legend of the screen

After quitting acting, he gained a new reputation as a writer of historical fiction, co-writing four books with Daniel Lenihan: “Wake of the Perdido Star”, “Justice for None”, “Vermillion” and “Escape from Andersonville”.

He then went on to deliver two solo writing efforts, “Payback at Morning Peak” and “Pursuit”.

However, it is the movies that this legend of the screen will be remembered for the most and as Hollywood wakes to the shocking news, it can be guaranteed that the tributes will be many and heartfelt.