Gene Hackman

I try not to look at that kind of thing as an actor. I try to only... look at characters and the script in a way that is always fresh for me. I ask myself a few very basic questions about how is this person like me? How is this person unlike me? And in answering those things is where I usually come up with the character.

Well, there's some very obvious things where I ask myself, for instance, in a French connection, I would say to myself, am I a policeman? No, of course not. What does it take to be a policeman? If I can really be honest about myself, given my personality, my physical makeup, what kind of a policeman would I be? Would I be able to do certain things that are required of me in this story?

Yes, maybe. If I say to myself no, then the next question is, well, what do I have to do in order to convince somebody that I am capable of doing that?

Well, some of it was pure acting. And some of it, as I said before, that sometimes I would say to myself, I couldn't do this. I couldn't say that line to that character in reality. So then I have to ask myself, if you say you can't say that in reality, then how are you going to act that? I would then give myself a situation where under some circumstance... I would be able to do that.

I would relate to an argument possibly that I had had with someone at some very high voltage time in my life to the point where I could say, okay, given the right circumstances, I can do that. Now, I will now try to recreate that moment just to speak in layman's terms for myself by doing it in a sensory way. What was I wearing that day that this event took place? What was the weather like?

What was the atmosphere? And be very specific about that so that then I can create, recreate a situation for myself that is similar to the situation in the script.

I find in me a sadistic streak. I find something in me that may not be very attractive, but that I feel would be valuable in this context. I think if we... If you search hard enough, you can find a lot of elements in yourself that you can use as an actor. Under certain circumstances, we're all capable of murder, I suppose. So you just have to find that circumstance.

Sadism, I suppose, is not something that I find very attractive, but I guess there are certain things in me that will elicit that kind of thing.

Well, that's true.

It is. It's always more fun to play heavy than it is to play a good guy. My kids are always asking me to play these things that are grandfathers and And Kindly Old Gentleman, and I just tell them that, you know, it's not that I dislike watching that kind of thing, but for me to play it is not as interesting.

I have, yes. I have grandfathers and things like that that are all-knowing and... and all that, and they just don't interest me.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, well, I thought I wanted to paint. I thought I wanted to do a lot of things, and once I started doing those things, I found that I didn't have the skill that I... pretend to have as an actor. And so I kind of drifted back to it. If you've done it as long as I have, it's very hard to drop it.

You know, there's something very seductive about acting because, you know, you come to work and there's 90 people standing there waiting for you to do something. And there is something both very heady and seductive and unattractive about that.

Get your hands on your heads. Get off the bar and get on the wall.

Get over that. Get your hands on your head.

Matter of fact, the second day of shooting, I had asked the director to replace me because I just didn't feel I could do it. I was popping these guys in the mouth. And after a while, you punch somebody long enough, you get kind of used to it.

On Independence Day...

Lex Luthor. Possibly you've heard of the name, the greatest criminal mind on earth.

Turned out to be real natural as a traveling salesman.

It's all I ever wanted to do. I fulfilled a lot of my dreams.

your father left? Well, my dad left us when I was about 13, I guess. Was it easy, hard? No, it was tough. Tough. I've read that there was a sort of casual wave goodbye. Yeah, I was down the street playing with some guys and he drove by and kind of waved. That was it. But you saw him occasionally, presumably, huh? Were you close to your mother? Yeah. Excuse me. Did life change radically?

It's only been 65 years or something.