Gene hackman ‘loved the performance and hated everything that was going with him’

“He loved being an actor and hated all the things around being an actor.”

That, for film director Barry Sonnenfeld, is how he will remember Gene Hackman, who died at the age of 95.

The endless hours in hair and makeup, repeated shots and study notes, all frustrated Hackman, Sonnenfeld said to BBC News.

So did the actors who appeared without knowing their lines, especially John Travolta, who Hackman faced the set of 1995 movie Shorty, which Sonnenfeld directed.

In the days elapsed since the news of Hackman’s death, I have been talking to people who, such as Sonnenfeld, knew and worked with him.

What is clear immediately is how severely Hackman took the performance and how meticulously treated the scripts.

But what is also clear is that it distrusts Hollywood traps.

Hackman, twice Oscar winner, died with his wife Betsy Arakawa, 65, and his dog at his home in New Mexico. There was no cause of death, but the police said the situation was “suspicious enough” to deserve the investigation.

The authorities said Friday that Evidence points For Hackman to have been dead since February 17, 10 days before the bodies of the couples were found.

Here in Los Angeles, Hackman’s face is everywhere in television newsletters and newspapers.

His death was all that anyone was talking to while the stars gathered for parties to the Oscars.

I was in one of those events on Thursday night, where American actor John C Reilly told me that I expected the academy to commemorate Hackman on Sunday. “I don’t see how you could have the Oscars without mentioning a great like him who has died.”

For Sonnenfeld and for Irish director John Moore, who directed Hackman in Behind Enemy Lines of 2001, was Hackman’s way to deal with the scripts that demonstrated his brilliance. He would eliminate all the scriptwriter’s notes on how his character should deliver his lines.

“Because I didn’t want any screenwriter to tell him how he was supposed to feel at that time,” said Sonnenfeld.

“So I had unique scripts cut and glued that had no information from the writer about anything, because I wanted to make those decisions, not the writer.”

Moore remembers a similar incident since the first time he filmed with Hackman.

“I was sitting in silence there, drawing scripts pages, cutting them, eliminating strange things as descriptions of scenes, and then putting them in blank pages,” he said.

He said Hackman said: “Acting is my job, you do the rest.”

“He made me fear of God,” Moore said, laughing.

“It was essentially he said: ‘I don’t need anything, since I’m so good. You better bring your game A, since I bring mine.'”

It was not only superfluous study notes that bother Hackman.

“I had this conflict in the sense that this brilliant actor was, but he hated the tropes of what was needed to act in movies,” Sonnenfeld said.

“(He) hated putting makeup. Put the closet. The person from the closet then takes, taking the lipstick and rubbing his wardrobe. The makeup person recombinating his hair while he speaks to me,” he said.

“All that kind of fussy hair and makeup and all that, I think that drove it crazy.”

Nor did I want to socialize after filming, said Moore.

“I would try to have a drink with him after shooting, and go to the minibar,” he said.

“I would have one, that was all.

“For Gene, it was acting,” Sonnenfeld added. “End of the story. Sac me here as quickly as possible.”

Hackman could be “a hard actor” to work, Sonnenfeld said. “He didn’t suffer silly.”

In Get Shorty, Hackman starred along with Travolta, who plays a Miami gangster sent to collect a debt.

“Gene was an consummated actor, both technically and artistically. So he came to settle every day knowing his lines,” Sonnenfeld said.

“John came to establish without knowing his lines, probably not having read the script the night before.”

That resulted in a confrontation on the first day of filming.

Sonnenfeld remembers Travolta, whom he describes as “lovely but not aware of himself,” he asked Hackman what he had done the weekend.

Hackman replied: “Nothing except learning the lines”, to which Travolta replied: “Well, that is a loss of weekend,” according to Sonnenfeld.

As he advanced, Hackman became “more angry and angry” in his co -star without knowing his lines.

Sonnenfeld said he let Hackman take away his anger.

“For the next 12 weeks, I shouted every time John didn’t know his lines,” he said.

“But he’s great in a movie. And he knew he was never really angry with me.”

According to reports, Travolta was not the only one to rub Hackman in the wrong way.

According to reports, he faced others, including the director of Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson.

Later, and possibly casually, Hackman appointed one of his novels Escape from Andersonville.

“Gene was really hard with Wes,” recalled Bill Murray, who co -starred Hackman in the successful 2001 film, in An interview with Associated Press.

“It was a hard nut, Gene Hackman. But it was really good.”

Moore, meanwhile, said he never felt Hackman was difficult to work.

“He was patient and relentlessly professional,” he said.

“My memories are him laughing and smiling, and counting very funny jokes.”

Moore admitted that Hackman could have been irritated with any person in the set to play his greatest role than it was.

“So I could see how it could be fun about the actors that were being patched,” he said.

“But again it goes back to the grain, really wanted to make the movies exceptional.”

Hackman retired from the performance in 2004 and since then lived a quiet life in New Mexico with his wife.

“I suspect that one of the reasons why he moved to Santa Fe, again, outdoors and so far from Hollywood,” Sonnenfeld said.

In 2008, Hackman gave a rare interview with Reuters, in which he was asked If I missed acting.

He replied saying that the business was, for him, “very stressful.”

“The commitments you have to make in the movies are only part of the beast, and had reached a point where I no longer felt I wanted to do it.”

But, he added: “I miss the real part of the performance, since it is what I did for almost 60 years.

“And I really loved it.”