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By Michelle McGahan
Contributing Entertainment Writer
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Gene Hackman's death has shaken Hollywood. The actor, his wife, and their dog were all found dead at their home in New Mexico on February 26, 2025. He was 95 years old.
Hackman's decades-spanning career in the film industry was one revered by his peers and critics alike. The Conversation star was nominated for five Academy Awards over a period of 25 years, winning two.
The three-time Golden Globe winner was first nominated for an Oscar in 1968, nabbing a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his critically-acclaimed performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie & Clyde, the titular Clyde's older brother.
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Hackman received his second Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination three years later, in 1971, for I Never Sang for My Father.
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But it was his third nod from the Academy — for the starring role of his career, in 1971's The French Connection — that not only earned him his first-ever Best Actor Oscar nomination, but also scored him his first-ever Oscar statue.
Liza Minelli presented him with the award at the 1972 Oscars, where he was up against iconic actors including Walter Matthau and George C. Scott.
The French Connection took home the most statues that year. In addition to Hackman's win, the iconic action film — which follows New York City detectives' pursuit of a French drug smuggler — won a total of five Oscars that night, including Best Picture and Best Director for William Friedken.
Though the rest of the '70s were just as good to Hackman — he starred as villain Lex Luthor in 1978's Superman, a character that helped define his career — he didn't receive another Oscar nom until 1989, for his role in Mississippi Burning. He lost the Best Actor statue that year to Dustin Hoffman in Rainman.
The Royal Tenenbaums star's second and final Oscar win came just several years later, in 1993, when he won Best Supporting Actor for the Clint Eastwood Western Unforgiven. During his acceptance speech, Hackman dedicated the Oscar to his uncle, whom he called "a wonderful guy." Unforgiven, like The French Connection 20 years earlier, also dominated at the Oscars that night, taking home Best Picture and Best Director as well.
Hackman, his wife, Betsy Arakawa, and one of their three dogs were found dead at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on February 26, 2025. Per police, it appears as if the couple — who were found in separate rooms in their home — had been dead for some time. Their deaths are being investigated as "suspicious" per police.
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