Who is the Modern-Day Gene Hackman?
All the potential candidates, ranked and rated.
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Gene Hackman died this week, and I’m sure I’ll be far from the only movie fan paying tribute. I didn’t know the man and I was born after he released a solid portion of his ouvre, so part of me feels like it’s not even my place to memorialize him; that I should leave it to the older and better informed. That’s the weird thing about people dying though: it never feels like it’s your place to memorialize. Especially if you lived a great long life like Gene Hackman did, everyone still around to do the remembering ends up being a generation or so removed from the deceased. The necessary inadequacy of any eulogy and so forth. So, you know, fuck it. Let’s remember what we want.
Usually when a 95-year-old dies, you don’t spend much time pondering the cause of death, but Hackman was found inside his house with his 64-year-old wife and one of his German Shepherds also dead. They’d apparently been dead for some time when they were found, and the dog was locked in a closet. Which probably explains how it died, given the time since its owners died (there were two other dogs there, still alive). There was also reportedly an open pill bottle on the counter and some pills scattered around. Which means… who knows! Old people tend to have a lot of pills! Weird scene, in any case.
One of Hackman’s daughter told TMZ she suspected carbon monoxide poisoning, but that sounds like idle speculation. I don’t know if it’s heroic or tragic to live until 95, only to end up dying of carbon monoxide poisoning, but that implies that there’s some sort of dignified manner of death for a 95-year-old. Cooler than shitting yourself to death, less cool than crashing a helicopter into the side of a cliff, I guess. Anyway, none of that is particularly important for our purposes here. It just felt like necessary context.
Our actual purpose here? Hijacking a thread initially started by Kristi Yamaguccimane on X (the everything app). He naturally pondered the question that I turned into this here headline: “Who is the modern-day Gene Hackman?”
That’s a tough question for a few reasons. As I wrote in my reply, Hackman's chief qualities were being handsome enough, but could read authentically working class. I’ve heard it called “country handsome,” or maybe 70s handsome. He had that quality. And first and foremost, Gene Hackman was a guy who looked like he might either kick your ass or buy you a beer, and you really wanted the second one. My grandfather drove a meat truck and drank an entire pot of boiling hot, black coffee straight from a thermos every morning (slurping deafeningly the whole time, according to my father and uncle), and Gene Hackman always read as the kind of guy my grandfather might’ve hung out with. I can’t picture him without Earth-toned pants made of weird material and the smell of cigarettes.
Which is to say: it’s hard to think of a “modern-day Gene Hackman,” largely because people just don’t look like they did in the seventies. Supposedly Hackman had been interested in acting since he was young, but joined the Marines when he was 16 and didn’t start pursuing it as a career or hobby until he was 26 or 27. Nowadays, almost every actor of Hackman’s prominence grew up doing bad sitcoms on Disney or Nickelodeon. Ryan Gosling, an actor I love, is a former Mouseketeer. There’s nothing wrong with that and it’s not to say Ryan Gosling will always be a Mouseketeer, but to some extent, you can tell which of them was a Marine and which one was a Mouseketeer. Gosling’s resume is pretty typical for American actors in their 30s and 40s.
So we know what doesn’t make a Gene Hackman, but what does? To me his central appeal as an actor was an authentic wildness, and in an unassuming package. It wasn’t weirdness, exactly, which is interesting, because lots of actors are kinda weird, or goofy, or odd. Hackman seemed to lean more square. The wildness was more some kind of animal untameability in him, like a gorilla wearing a business suit. Outwardly square, inwardly feral. And yet he could also play sensitive, upright, unctuous, or charismatic.
That wildness made him a little unpredictable, which in turn made him compelling. It could also read scary, relatable, or aspirational (we mostly think of ourselves as potentially wild, or we want to be, even though wildness can also be unpredictable and scary). There was humanity in his wildness.
But enough with the blah blah blah. If I were breaking down what it takes to be the next Gene Hackman like stats on a baseball card or bullet points on a UFC pre-fight graphic, I’d say filling his shoes would take:
Physicality (not as in ripped like Jason Momoa, but a guy who could potentially kick your ass).
Potential for meanness. It’s not like he was a giant man, something about Hackman just seemed capable of sadism. He played henchmen as easily as authority figures.
Range. Despite the above, he could also play understanding or empathetic. He could play a submarine captain, racist detective, loving grandpa, and Lex Luthor with equal a-plum.
Salt-of-the-Earthness. Hackman looked like a guy who carried a lunchpail to work, sportswriting cliché as that description has become.
Now then, let’s evaluate some candidates.
Paul Giamatti
Someone mentioned this early on in the Twitter thread, and I think it’s mostly off, but that they share enough qualities to be worth comparison (interviewed him once. charming guy).
Pros: Range. Salt-of-the-Earth qualities (his dad was the commissioner of Major League Baseball, but he at least looks Salt-of-the-Earth). Similar hairline. Can go from quiet to shrieking in a way sort of similar to Hackman. The category “actors with operatic vocal range” brings the two closest together. (Lorraine Bracco is the queen of this one — her performance in Goodfellas is as good as any DC hardcore).
Cons: Most obviously, he lacks the physicality. Giamatti is one of my favorite actors. He might have even more range than Hackman did, but I’ve never felt worried that he might kick my ass. He could do feral, but reads more minion than heavy.
Potential Hackman Score: 5/10.
Jude Law
Pros: Range. Intensity. Looks great in a mustache. Power alleys for days. Looks very Hackman-like in The Order.
Cons: Too pretty. Too British. Too… cosmopolitan. He seems a little too preppy — which could either be an inability to entirely separate him from his role in The Talented Mr. Ripley, or just a byproduct of him being pretty. The Order was by far his most Hackman-esque role and he was great in it, but he doesn’t entirely ever strike me as a guy who could crush a BLT at a diner.
Potential Hackman Score: 8/10.
Tom Hardy
Pros: Ruggedness. Range. Physicality.
Cons: British. Too pretty. Too mumbly.
Hardy has a physicality, and he’s another one of my favorite actors, but I’ve never seen him wail like Hackman. He’s more of a quiet badass.
Potential Hackman Score: 7/10.
Kevin Spacey
Someone else in the replies said this. It sounds wrong on the face of it, but in a galaxy brain kind of way, I could see it being true, at least up until in the late aughts.
Pros: Range. Can definitely do both charming and evil. Also played Lex Luthor.
Cons: Doesn’t quite have the physicality or wildness. Career basically over.
Potential Hackman Score: 5.5/10.
Adam Driver
This was my choice. I think I got there thinking about actors who were in the military. I don’t think that’s why they seem similar, but once I got there in my head, I liked it more and more.
Pros: Physicality. Range. Intensity. Similar loud/soft dynamic.
Cons: Where Hackman had a middle-American, Scots-Irish look to him, Adam Driver reads more ethnic white from the tri-state area. Which is funny, because Adam driver was actually raised mostly in Indiana by a Baptist minister. You could also say Driver is “too pretty” on account of he’s clearly a sex symbol (which I think Hackman maybe sort of was too?), but Driver isn’t really pretty. Most of the jokes on Girls were about him being sorta funny lookin’. If anything, he’s kind of ugly-hot.
Obviously it’s not a one-to-one looks comparison, but presence-wise, I think it’s a fit. The only real knocks on Driver that I can think of are that he has too much hair. Funny looking though he may be, Driver is sort of lush and abundant where Hackman was more flea-bitten and mangy.
And… maybe not enough genuine menace. Adam Driver looks like a guy who could kick your ass, but something about him makes him seem like he wouldn’t. He has Nice Guy Eyes. Hackman had wild ones. Driver is also maybe more weird-looking sex symbol, where Hackman is more average-looking sex symbol.
Potential Hackman Score: 9/10.
Jason Clarke
Pros: Probably the most similar-looking actor. Same hairline. Solid actor. Similar physicality.
Cons: Too squinty. Not unpredictable enough. Australian. Probably more of a character guy than a leading man. I think he has some of Hackman’s uprightness and dignity, but lacks some of the charisma. I don’t know if he could do con artist or slimeball as well. Strong actor, but maybe not as effortlessly likable? He can be scary, but it’s more in a duplicitous way. If he has Hackman’s volatility/operatic vocal range, I haven’t seen it.
Potential Hackman Score: 8.5/10.