The legendary actor Gene Hackman was found dead alongside his wife, Betsy Arakawa, in their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, authorities say.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza told the Santa Fe New Mexican that the couple, whose bodies were found Wednesday afternoon, had died along with their dog.
He did not disclose a cause of death or say when they might have died, but Mendoza did say there is no immediate indication of foul play. Hackman, 95, and Arakawa, 64, were found during a welfare check after a neighbor had become concerned about their wellbeing, Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Public Information Officer Denise Avila told ABC News.
“This is an active investigation - however, at this time we do not believe that foul play was a factor,” Mendoza reiterated in a statement to the BBC. “All I can say is that we’re in the middle of a preliminary death investigation, waiting on approval of a search warrant.”
The couple, who had been married for 34 years, lived in Sunset Trail, Mendoza said.
Born in 1930, Hackman was one of the most accomplished screen actors of the later part of the 20th century. He was a two-time Academy Award winner and five-time nominee, taking home the awards for best actor for The French Connection and best supporting actor for Unforgiven.
He joined the Marines at age 16 and served nearly 5 years in China, Japan and Hawaii before enrolling at the University of Illinois to study journalism and television production. But in 1956 he decided to pursue his long-time dream of becoming an actor and enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse in California, he told Inside the Actors Studio in 2001. There he befriended Dustin Hoffman, and the two moved to New York, where they lived with Robert Duvall and chased roles.
After working for years as a struggling actor on screen and television, Hackman’s big break on Broadway came in 1964’s Any Wednesday, which later led to his star-making turn in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde.
Although he didn’t have the typical movie star good looks, he was an adept character actor who could inhabit a wide range of roles. He played a big-budget villain in Superman, an inspirational small-town basketball coach in Hoosiers, and an eccentric patriarch in The Royal Tenenbaums.
Arakawa was a classical pianist from Hawaii. She and Hackman began dating in the mid-1980s after meeting at a gym in California, where Arakawa was working part-time while pursuing her music career, according to People magazine. Hackman had been married to his first wife, Faye Maltese, from 1956 to 1986, though he later clarified he didn’t leave her for Arakawa.
By 1990, Hackman and Arakawa were sharing a home in Santa Fe, and the following year, they married. Arakawa became a stepmother to Hackman’s three children with Maltese. According to Hackman’s author bio at Simon and Schuster, the couple had two German shepherds.
Hackman retired from acting in the early 2000s because he suffered from heart problems, he told Reuters, and later pivoted to writing.
Arakawa helped him hone his style through “unwavering, specific read-throughs,” he told the podcast Writer’s Bone in 2014. The couple was extremely private and appreciated that they could live their lives free from gossip and intrusion in Santa Fe, according to People.
