In brief
Eugene Allen Hackman (January 30, 1930 – February 2025) was an American actor and novelist renowned for his rugged versatility across genres, from gritty crime dramas to Westerns, earning two Academy Awards over a career spanning five decades.
Born in San Bernardino, California, to a newspaper printing press operator father who later abandoned the family, Hackman experienced a peripatetic youth before enlisting in the United States Marine Corps at age 16 by falsifying his age. He served from 1946 to 1951 as a field radio operator and broadcast journalist, with deployments to China, Japan, and Hawaii, attaining the rank of Private First Class but missing combat in the Korean War due to injuries sustained in training.
Photographs
Hero photograph: Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons
