Star Actor Gene Hackman Found Dead Alongside His Wife

Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman was found dead alongside his longtime wife and their dog in their Santa Fe home, where police found an inexplicable scene that brought an end to his storied career in Hollywood and later life of leisure.

No foul play is suspected in the deaths of Hackman, 95, and Betsy Arakawa, 64, who had been married since 1991. That, however, is the only conclusion police have seemed to draw from the scene.

An investigation is ongoing into what caused the Hollywood lead man and Arakawa, a classical pianist, to wind up dead on the floor of their Santa Fe home.

“On February 26, 2025 at approximately 1:45 p.m., Santa Fe County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to an address on Old Sunset Trail in Hyde Park where Gene Hackman, 95 and his wife Betsy Arakawa, 64, and a dog were found deceased,” the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office told Fox News Digital early Thursday morning.

Hackman achieved critical acclaim for many roles over his 45-year acting career though is best known for his Oscar-winning roles in 1975’s “The French Connection II” and 1991 Clint Eastwood film “Unforgiven.” His depth of performances spanned villains, antiheroes, and underdogs between the 1960s and his retirement in 2004.

Tributes to the actor immediately began to pour onto the internet Thursday morning.

“The loss of a great artist, always cause for both mourning and celebration: Gene Hackman a great actor, inspiring and magnificent in his work and complexity,” Francis Ford Coppola wrote on Instagram. The director hired Hackman for the Oscar-nominated film “The Conversation” (1974). “I mourn his loss, and celebrate his existence and contribution.”

Born January 30th, 1931 in San Bernardino, the California native moved to Danville, Illinois in his youth where his father worked as a pressman for the Commercial-News. In past interviews, Hackman admitted being on the receiving end of his father’s physical violence, and he found refuge in movie theaters where he aspired to be like two of his childhood idols, Errol Flynn and James Cagney.

By 16, Hackman said he “suddenly got the itch to get out” and lied about his age to enter the U.S. Marines. There, he served as a field radio operator from 1947 to 1952, where he destroyed “Japanese military equipment so that the communists couldn’t obtain it,” according to an article on the U.S. Department of Defense website.

After earning his high school equivalency degree in the Marines, Hackman was discharged and enrolled in a journalism program at the University of Illinois. He left his intended field six months later to enter a radio announcing program in New York which sent him to stations in Florida and his hometown of Danville before he switched to an acting course at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Through the 1950s and early 1960s Hackman worked tirelessly as a doorman and truck driver while performing off-Broadway and waiting for his big break. He got it in 1967 with a supporting role in the hit film “Bonnie and Clyde,” putting him on the path to his first starring role in “I Never Sang for My Father” (1970) where he played a man struggling to reconcile his relationship with his dying father.

Prior to his marriage with Arakawa, Hackman was married to Fay Maltese in 1956 and shared one son with her, Christopher, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Leslie.

Following his retirement, Hackman pursued some of his private passions, such as painting, stunt flying, stock car racing, and deep sea diving, according to Fox News. He traded the stage for the pen, authoring novels at his ranch in Santa Fe overlooking the Colorado Rockies.

“We have lost one of the true giants of the screen. Gene Hackman could play anyone, and you could feel a whole life behind it,” “Star Trek” actor George Takei wrote on X Thursday morning. “He could be everyone and no one, a towering presence or an everyday Joe. That’s how powerful an actor he was. He will be missed, but his work will live on forever.

WATCH:

Gene Hackman has passed away at the age of 95.
Gene was one of the greatest actors of his, or anyone’s generation. He was a powerhouse, as adept at comedy as he was drama. Today is a very sad day, we’ve lost a legend. Gene was a giant of cinema.
R.I.P Gene Hackman pic.twitter.com/iL19ky4not

— The Sting (@TheStingisBack) February 27, 2025