Living outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, Hackman was married twice and had three children –Christopher, Elizabeth Jean and Leslie Anne, with his late ex-wife, Faye Maltese, who died in 2017. He married Arakawa in 1991.
Hackman was a native Midwesterner, born during the Great Depression in Illinois.
He came from a broken family – his father left when he was 13, waving enigmatically as he drove away one day. Hackman said he knew right then that the man was never coming back.
Hackman’s mother died in a fire before he had established himself as an actor.
He also served an unpleasant stint in the US Marines, which he joined at 16 by lying about his age.
He used his personal turmoil as fuel to flesh out his characters. “Dysfunctional families have sired a number of pretty good actors,” Hackman told The Guardian in 2002.
Hackman was an unlikely star – he came to acting relatively late after dabbling in a series of jobs, and only attracted attention in his 30s.
In fact after his enrollment at the Pasadena Playhouse in California in the late 1950s, Hollywood legend tells that he and a fellow student, one Dustin Hoffman, were voted the “least likely to succeed.”
Later, they would pal around with Robert Duvall in New York when all three were struggling actors.
Not blessed with leading man good looks, Hackman instead drew on his talents and versatility, taking on gritty roles and delivering thoughtful, intelligent performances.
“I wanted to act, but I’d always been convinced that actors had to be handsome. That came from the days when Errol Flynn was my idol. I’d come out of a theater and be startled when I looked in a mirror because I didn’t look like Flynn. I felt like him,” Hackman once said.