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In announcing the death just after midnight on Thursday, the Santa Fe County Sheriff said there was no immediate indication of foul play. The two time Oscar-winning actor was 95. Arakawa was 63.
Gene Hackman, two time Oscar-winning screen legend has died. He and wife Betsy Arakawa, a classical pianist, were reportedly found dead in their home just outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Wednesday afternoon. Hackman was 95.
The news was confirmed to the media just after midnight on Thursday, with Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza telling the Santa Fe New Mexican that the actor and his wife had died, along with their dog.
He also reported there was no immediate indication of foul play, but did not provide a cause of death or say when the couple might have passed. They were married 34 years.
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His most popular role may have come in 1978’s Superman: The Movie, and its sequels, when Hackman portrayed villain Lex Luthor opposite Christopher Reeve’s Man of Steel. He won his first Oscar for his work in 1971’s The French Connection, picking up a second two decades later for Clint Eastwood’s classic western, Unforgiven.
Prior to becoming an actor, Hackman served in the United States Marines for four and a half years as a teenager, before shifting to journalism and television production. He finally enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse at 27, launching what would become an iconic film career.
Aside from his two Oscars, Hackman was also honored for both of those films with the Golden Globe and BAFTA, while he also scored a SAG Award for The Birdcage and another Golden Globe for The Royal Tenenbaums in 2002, followed by the Cecil B. DeMille Award the following year.
Hackman came up in the 1960s alongside fellow aspiring actors Rubert Duvall and Dustin Hoffman, with the trio often sharing apartments in New York City as they tried to make it big. He finally got to star alongside Hoffman in one of his final projects, Runaway Jury in 2003. His final acting credit came in 2004 opposite Ray Romano in Welcome to Mooseport.
The actor partnered with undersea archaeologist Daniel Lenihan for three novels from 1999 to 2004, which he followed with western Payback at Morning Peak in 2011 and Pursuit in 2013 on his own.
Prior to his 1991 marriage to Arakawa, Hackman was married to Faye Maltese from 1956 until their divorce in 1986. The couple share three children, Christopher Allen, Elisabeth Jean, and Leslie Anne.
