The only roles Gene Hackman regretted not playing

In 1974, Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein took the box office by storm. Audiences loved its fiercely clever but brilliantly silly parody of classic horror and were particularly enamoured with one scene that took them by surprise. When Peter Boyle’s lumbering Frankenstein’s Monster visits a blind, hermetic priest who spills hot soup on his lap and sets his thumb on fire instead of a cigar, the audience is stunned to realise the actor under the priest’s long wig and bushy beard is Hackman.

At that time, Hackman was only a few years removed from winning ‘Best Actor’ for playing renegade cop Popeye Doyle in William Friedkin’s ‘Best Picture’-winning classic. He followed that up with a heroic role in The Poseidon Adventure and Francis Ford Coppola’s quietly menacing neo-noir The Conversation, cementing his status as one of the finest dramatic actors in the business. That said, Hackman had a secret hankering that few knew about: he wanted to make people laugh.

Thankfully, Hackman regularly played tennis with one of the industry’s premiere funnymen: Gene Wilder, the star of Young Frankenstein. During one of their frequent showdowns on the court, Hackman put himself forward for a role despite being told the money on offer was nothing like what he was used to. Undeterred, he said he just wanted to be a part of it, and that was that.

Hackman’s rib-tickling Young Frankenstein cameo became one of his most popular parts, although genuine inroads into comedy still proved difficult. In 1978’s Superman, he jumped at the chance to embrace his silly side again as Lex Luthor, telling the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “I loved the Superman assignments, on account of the comic villainy I was allowed to do there.” Indeed, Hackman wound up playing the supervillain in Superman II and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, too.

In addition to comedy, Hackman also wanted to take a stab at another venerable Hollywood genre: the romantic drama. Once again, those roles proved few and far between for the star, even though he loved playing the steelworker tempted by an extra-marital affair in 1985’s Twice in a Lifetime. “I have regretted not letting more of my career go toward comedy or toward romantic portrayals,” he confessed. “The idea of myself as a romantic leading man – well, let’s just say Twice in a Lifetime was a very real pleasure.”

On the plus side, Hackman did get the chance to make audiences chuckle a couple more times in the decade or so before he retired. He memorably played B-movie director Harry Zimm in 1995’s Get Shorty, as well as the odious tobacco tycoon William B Tensy in 2001’s Heartbreakers. That same year, he gave the world arguably his best comic performance in Wes Anderson’s quirky The Royal Tenenbaums, even if his dispute with the director became the stuff of legend.

Unfortunately, no more romantic roles were on the cards, and it’s tempting to wonder if that would have been the case if, as Hackman lamented, he had pursued them more forcefully in his early career.

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