(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Thu 26 February 2026 21:45, UK
When most of us consider the life and career of Gene Hackman, we think about an unparalleled acting talent who brought darkly complex figures to life.
Popeye Doyle in William Friedkin’s The French Connection, Harry Caul in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, and Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven were all hard-hitting, often elusive characters who had a depth to them that no script could singlehandedly create. Hackman’s ability to humanise even irredeemable characters made him one of the greatest actors of his generation.
All of that is well documented, but one of his skills that is far less celebrated is his comedic chops. No one is suggesting that he could have gone head-to-head with Robin Williams on a stand-up stage, but take a look at some of his more humorous roles, and you’ll discover that the man had an annoyingly excellent ear for comedy, too.
As early as 1974, Hackman was throwing down with the best of them, by which I mean that he was absolutely riveting in Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein. Playing a blind hermit named Harold, he cheerily tossed away lines like “don’t inhale until the tip blows” as he’d been doing comedy for decades. He made it look so natural that it’s hard to remember him pummelling innocent bystanders in The French Connection.
Other comedic forays included Get Shorty in 1995 and The Birdcage in 1996, in which he played a conservative congressman who goes to meet the parents of his son’s new fiancée without knowing that they are a gay couple masquerading as straight. The latter is arguably the best film of the bunch, but for Hackman, the movie that was the most comedically out there was 2001’s Heartbreakers.
Directed by David Mirkin, it stars Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt as a mother and daughter con team who attain their riches by seducing men. Hackman plays a hapless tobacco tycoon who becomes their prime target, and his performance is uncharacteristically broad, later saying that he liked the blend of comedy and emotional truth in the script and that he “thought it would be great fun to play such an outrageous character,” and he does indeed go all-out, and while it is far from his greatest performance, that has more to do with the ridiculousness of the script than with his acting.
Before you think that Hackman was simply indulging in the light work of comedy as an off-ramp to retirement, consider how committed he was to the role. He didn’t just turn up to set with his lines roughly memorised; he created a whole version of the character that required hours of makeup each morning.
He was 70 at the time but decided that the tobacco tycoon needed to look a lot older. He insisted on having his face aged with additional wrinkles and liver spots, wore a fake set of yellowed teeth, and took the time to learn how to smoke herbal cigarettes like a pro, even though he wasn’t a smoker.
If that isn’t the sign of a consummate professional, I don’t know what is. Heartbreakers didn’t get much airtime during the lengthy tributes to Hackman following his death, but given how hard he worked for it, it probably should have.