Alert – Gene Hackman dead at 95: Iconic actor and wife Betsy Arakawa, 64, are found dead with their dog at Santa Fe home

Legendary Hollywood star Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa have been found dead in their Santa Fe home. 

The couple, who had been married since 1991, and their dog were found dead at 1.45pm Wednesday afternoon when police were dispatched to the home. No foul play is suspected but an exact cause of death is not yet determined, police said.

It is still unclear if authorities were conducting a welfare check or responding to a report of the deaths.

Santa Fe sheriff Adan Mendoza added that officials are ‘in the middle of a preliminary death investigation’ which is ‘active and ongoing’. The tragic fate of their dog could be key in the mystery surrounding their deaths and help detectives piece together the couple’s final moments.

Hackman, a two-time Oscar winner with an estimated net worth of $80million, just turned 95 in late January. He became a recluse in the last 20 years of his life, after retiring from acting in 2004. He packed up his things, left Los Angeles for a quiet life in New Mexico – and he never looked back. 

Hackman shared three children with his first wife Faye Maltese. He and Arakawa, a 64-year-old classical pianist, had been married for the last three decades.

Some initially thought that his shock decision to retire had to do with his marriage, but Hackman actually quit acting because of the severe stress he was under – which became too much to handle after he started to have issues with his heart.

‘The straw that broke the camel’s back was actually a stress test that I took in New York,’ he said in 2009, five years after his retirement. ‘The doctor advised me that my heart wasn’t in the kind of shape that I should be putting it under any stress.’

He admitted to having an angioplasty, a procedure to widen narrowed or blocked arteries, in an interview in 2004 and revealed he had been battling ‘severe angina’, a condition in which one has chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart.

The former Marine appeared in more than 80 films, as well as on television and the stage during his lengthy career that started in the early 1960s. 

Tributes have started pouring in for the Hollywood legend with Star Trek star George Takei hailing him as ‘one of the true giants of the screen’ and filmmaker Frances Ford Coppola added that he was ‘great actor, inspiring and magnificent in his work and complexity’. Hackman’s fans added that they are ‘devastated’ that ‘one of the all time great actors has sadly left the stage’.

Legendary Hollywood star Gene Hackman, pictured in the 1971 film The French Connection, and his wife Betsy Arakawa have been found dead in their Santa Fe home 

Hackman is seen with his wife Betsy Arakawa (pictured, right) in March 2024. It was the first time in two decades that the couple, had been married since 1991, were seen out and about

The couple were found alongside their dog in their Santa Fe home (pictured) on Wednesday morning. No foul play is suspected

Gene Hackman, seen here with Estelle Parsons in 1967, was a two-time Oscar winner and had just turned 95 in late January

Last year, Hackman and Arakawa were seen out and about for the first time in two decades. 

The actor was spotted holding onto his wife’s arm for balance as the pair grabbed a bite at Pappadeaux’s Seafood Kitchen in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

Before the dinner date, Hackman enjoyed a cup of coffee and some apple pie from a local Speedway store.

The couple’s outing marks the first time they were seen together in public for 21 years, with the last time being at the 2003 Golden Globe Awards, where he won the Cecil B. deMille award.

The legendary two-time Oscar winner and his long-time partner seemed to be in a good mood as they left the restaurant together. 

He told Reuters in 2008: ‘I haven’t held a press conference to announce retirement, but yes, I’m not going to act any longer.’

‘I’ve been told not to say that over the last few years, in case some real wonderful part comes up, but I really don’t want to do it any longer.’

He also explained his passion for writing novels, saying ‘I like the loneliness of it, actually. It’s similar in some ways to acting, but it’s more private and I feel like I have more control over what I’m trying to say and do.’

The Oscar-award winning actor, pictured at the Academy Awards in 1993, actually quit acting because of the severe stress he was under, which became too much to handle after he started to have issues with his heart 

Gene Hackman had three children with his first wife Faye Maltese. He and Maltese are pictured together in the 1980s

Raquel Welch, Gene Hackman and Cloris Leachman (holding her Best Supporting Actress Oscar) at the 44th Academy Awards in Hollywood April 17 1972

‘There’s always a compromise in acting and in film, you work with so many people and everyone has an opinion. … I don’t know that I like it better than acting, it’s just different. I find it relaxing and comforting.’

In 2011, he was asked by GQ if he would ever come out of retirement to do one more film, to which Hackman responded: ‘If I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything and just one or two people.’

He has not stayed completely away from the industry, however, as he has narrated two Marine Corps documentaries: The Unknown Flag Raiser of Iwo Jima (2016) and We, The Marines (2017).

Born in California on January 30, 1930, the actor left school after a row with his baseball coach and, lying about his age, joined the US Marines aged 16 ‘looking for adventure’. 

For the next four years, he served in post-war China and Japan as a field radio operator. His weakness for brawling got him into trouble to the extent that, after being promoted to corporal, he almost immediately lost his stripes.

He was discharged in 1952 after he was injured in a road accident.

He played an astronaut in the 1969 film Marooned

Gene Hackman and his daughter Elizabeth Hackman are spotted at Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California on March 24, 1979

Gene Hackman (right) and his son Christopher Allen Hackman attend the Fourth Annual Clint Eastwood Celebrity Tennis Tournament at the Beach and Tennis Club in Pebble Beach, California, on July 7, 1973

Gene Hackman (right) attends a screening of ‘Class Action’ at the Plitt Theater, Century City, California, March 13, 1991 with his daughter Leslie Hackman (left)

After moving back to California following his military service, he decided to pursue acting after briefly living in New York. 

As a child, Hackman particularly enjoyed his trips to the cinema with his mother. 

After one of them, she told him she’d love to see his face one day up on the big screen – tragically, she never did although their visits instilled in him a passion to act.

He and his father used to spend their Saturdays together until his father chose a Saturday to walk out on the family. 

The 13-year-old had had no idea it was coming. 

‘That day, he drove by and waved at me and I knew from that wave that he wasn’t coming back,’ said Hackman. 

‘That wave, it was like he was saying, “OK, it’s all yours. You’re on your own, kiddo”.’

Hackman, who said he frequently exploited the early pain in his life in his acting, once wryly observed that ‘dysfunctional families have sired a number of pretty good actors’.

Hackman played Kibby Womack in 1975’s Lucky Lady

He garnered praised for his role in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenebaums

Hackman also played Detective Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle in The French Connection

Betsy Arakawa and Gene hackman attend the Golden Globe Awards in 2003

Hackman began his acting career nearly 70 years ago, joining the Pasadena Playhouse in 1956, where he befriended fellow aspiring actor Dustin Hoffman.

He eventually moved to New York in 1963 and began performing in several Off-Broadway plays and smaller TV roles.

The thespian truly made his name in the 1970s, when he was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actor category for the 1970 flick, I Never Sang For My Father.

The following year he officially became a leading man, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as New York City Detective Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle in The French Connection.

He went on to have consistent work, including in disaster film The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) before landing the role of supervillain Lex Luthor in 1978’s Superman: The Movie.

In the 1980s he starred in several films including Reds (1981), Under Fire (1983), Hoosiers (1986), No Way Out (1987) and Mississippi Burning (1988).

The 1990s brought him his second Oscar as he earned the Best Supporting Actor gong for his work as sadistic sheriff ‘Little’ Bill Daggett alongside Clint Eastwood in 1992’s Unforgiven.

He rounded out that decade by also starring in Narrow Margin (1990), Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), The Firm (1993), The Chamber (1996), Wyatt Earp (1994), The Quick And The Dead (1995), Crimson Tide (1995), Get Shorty (1995,) Absolute Power (1997), The Birdcage (1996) and Enemy Of The State (1998).

Hackman continued to be active in the early 2000s with roles in Behind Enemy Lines (2001), Heist (2001), Runaway Jury (2003), and even earned the Golden Globe for Best Actor – Musical or Comedy for 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums.

Hackman has not starred in a movie since 2004, when he played Monroe ‘Eagle’ Cole in the political satire Welcome to Mooseport. 

Hackman left school after a row with his baseball coach and, lying about his age, joined the US Marines aged 16 ‘looking for adventure’. Above: Hackman in the US Marine Corps (left); right as a schoolboy

Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa married in 1991 after moving to their New Mexico home together in 1990. The pair are pictured together at the Mission Hills Celebrity Sports Invitational, Rancho Mirage, California, November 29, 1991

The couple had a love for German Shepherds, at one point owning three after adopting one in 1999

A deeply complicated man, Hackman was strangely squeamish about on-screen violence but loved a real-life scrap, according to Hoffman.

Hoffman recalled his friend once announcing ‘I gotta go’ and disappearing off to a bar because he ‘had to get in a fight’.

He was still getting into fights in his seventies. In 2001, a 71-year-old Hackman started a fist fight with two men over a minor traffic accident in West Hollywood. 

‘He brushed against me and I popped him,’ he recalled. ‘Then the other guy jumped on me. We had this ugly wrestling match on the ground. 

‘The police came … I got a couple of good shots in. The guy had me around the neck. That’s the ugly part. When you’re down on the ground and you’re nearly 72 years old.’

Even so, Hackman was hardly one to believe that placid, well-adjusted people necessarily made great actors.

His instinctive rebelliousness, he claimed in a rare 1994 interview, was seeded in a traumatic and unhappy childhood in which his violently disciplinarian father abandoned the family when he was 13 and his alcoholic mother eventually died in a house fire in 1962, reportedly passing out while holding a lit cigarette.

Hackman played Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde

Philip D’Antoni (left) and Gene Hackman, producer and star, respectively, of The French Connection, hold Oscars they won  at the 44th movie Academy Awards

Gene Hackman, is pictured with his wife Betsy, and daughters Leslie and Elizabeth at the 1996 premiere of his movie The Chamber

Hackman admitted that like so many successful actors always away filming he had seriously neglected his family.

‘You become very selfish as an actor. You spend so many years wanting desperately to be recognized as having the talent and then when you’re starting to be offered these parts, it’s very tough to turn anything down,’ he said. ‘Even though I had a family, I took jobs that would separate us for three or four months at a time.’

Hackman met his first wife, Faye Maltese, in 1955 – when Hackman was only 25 and nowhere near success. As reported by the New York Times Magazine in 1989, he and the ‘pretty and dark-haired’ secretary at Rockefeller Center initially crossed paths at a Y.M.C.A. dance in the Big Apple.

Their first few years as a young family were marked by struggle – the couple lived in a ‘cold water walk up’ – meaning there is no hot water supply available,’ in the city. 

His romance with his first partner Maltese, a bank clerk, was understood to be troubled – due to his determined, but overwhelming, rise to fame. 

The pair divorced in 1986 after spending 30 years together and raising three children – Christopher Allen and daughters Leslie Anne and Elizabeth Jean.

He and Arakawa, who was 32 years her husband’s junior, reportedly began dating in the mid-1980s after meeting at a gym in California.

Arakawa, who is believed to have been born in Hawaii, was pursuing a career in classical music at the time while working shifts in the gym.

Five years later, he walked down the aisle with Arakawa. The pair settled down in a two-bedroom house in Santa Fe.

Hackman later insisted that their relationship began after his divorce from Maltese, who he was married to from 1956 to 1986.

Discussing what he had in common with his character Harry Mackenzie, who leaves his wife for a barmaid in the 1985 film Twice in a Lifetime, he told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel: ‘By the way, I did not leave my real-life wife for a younger woman. 

‘We just drifted apart. We lost sight of each other. When you work in this business, marriage takes a great deal of work and love.’

Gene Hackman in 1992 film Unforgiven, where he played brutal sheriff ‘Little’ Bill Daggett

Gene Hackman acted alongside Dustin Hoffman in 2003 film Runaway Jury

Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman at the 1968 Academy Awards, where Hoffman was nominated for Best Actor in The Graduate and Hackman was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in Bonnie and Clyde

A naturally private man, Hackman was labelled a recluse as he remained out of the public eye for years on end.

Friends occasionally shared glimpses of his post-acting life, including social media shots of fishing expeditions – while paying tribute to his silver screen triumphs. 

He would also occasionally be spotted pedaling around Santa Fe on a bicycle.

Hackman announced his retirement from acting in 2004, leaving Los Angeles for a quieter life in New Mexico – and resisting any overtures to return in front of the camera.

He told of how his decision was influenced by the strain he suffered when acting, as well as health issues concerning his heart. He told of receiving a health warning from a doctor, while saying in a statement at the time: ‘The business for me is very stressful.’ 

Hackman had previously undergone surgery after facing problems with his heart – having been rushed to the hospital with chest pain and needing to have a balloon catheter inserted to help open an artery that had dangerously narrowed.

In 2009 he opened up more, telling an interviewer that his doctor ‘advised me that my heart wasn’t in the kind of shape that I should be putting it under any stress.’

He said: ‘When I’m actually on the set or on a stage, actually doing the work, I loved that process and I loved the creative process of trying to bring a character to life.

‘And then, when you’re actually shooting or performing, there is a kind of a feeling that comes over you, a confidence and kind of a wonderful, washed-over feeling of wellbeing, if you will, when it’s going well. 

‘Whereas, the business part of show business is kinda wicked. You jump from trying to be a sponge, if you will – in terms of input from other actors and the director and everything that’s surrounding you.’

Locals in Santa Fe have shared photos of Gene Hackman who moved there in the 1980s

This picture of Hackman (center) was shared from when he attended a show in 2022

In an interview with Empire in 2020, the retired actor said he enjoyed watching DVDs that Arakawa rented. 

‘We like simple stories that some of the little low-budget films manage to produce,’ he said. ‘Friday night is set aside for a Comedy Channel marathon, with particular attention paid to Eddie Izzard. The speed of thought is amazing.’

Old friend Robert Duvall described him as ‘a tormented guy, always into his own space, his own thing’.

Hackman insisted he never thought of himself as a ‘star’ – that was Warren Beatty, Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, he said.

The actor believed that celebrity was ruinous, observing: ‘If you look at yourself as a star you’ve already lost something in the portrayal of any human being…You need to remember you’re not a movie star and that you shouldn’t be too happy.’

‘Vesuvius’ said he’d rather just be remembered as a ‘decent actor’.

Celebrities including George Takei, comedian Dara O’Briain, rancis Ford Coppola and presenter Lorraine Kelly were among the famous names leading the heartfelt tributes for the star and his partner.

Taking to X on Thursday morning, George, known for his role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek, posted a touching tribute to the late actor.

He shared: ‘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. 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.’

Filmmaker Frances Ford Coppola, who worked with Gene in the 1974 film The Conversation, wrote on Threads: ‘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. I mourn his loss, and celebrate his existence and contribution.’ 

While Irish funnyman Dara penned: ‘Ah, Gene Hackman. The finest screen actor ever, I think. Not a single duff performance, in a long, long career. And the best delivery ever of a single word: when he says “Cigars!” In Young Frankenstein.’

Filmmaker Frances Ford Coppola, who worked with Gene in the 1974 film The Conversation, wrote on Threads: ‘The loss of a great artist, always cause for both mourning and celebration’

Taking to X on Thursday morning, Star Trek actor George Takei posted a touching tribute to the late actor

StudioCanal UK’s Instagram page shared images of Gene in their releases The Conversation and Narrow Margin as they paid tribute

 Irish funnyman Dara penned: ‘Ah, Gene Hackman. The finest screen actor ever, I think. Not a single duff performance, in a long, long career’

Meanwhile, appearing on Good Morning Britain as the news broke, Lorraine Kelly shared: ‘That is a real shocker, I was just reading about what an amazing actor he is, when you think of the movies that he’s been in…French Connection, everybody remembers that! Wonderful, wonderful film! I had no idea he was 95! That’s really really sad.’

The host continued: ‘He’s an absolute icon, brilliant. He was so funny in Birdcage… he could do drama, he could do comedy, he could do absolutely anything.’ 

Hackman’s heartbroken fans shared a plethora of emotional tributes to the star on Thursday following the news of his Arakawa’s deaths.

Movie fans were quick to share their devastation at the loss of the film icon, taking to X to share their thoughts.

They penned: ‘I loved Gene Hackman. He dressed up every movie he was in, and retired from acting only to become a fiction writer. What a life!’

‘Sad news to see that legendary actor Gene Hackman has died gone but not forgotten.’

‘The rasp, the twinkle, the charm, the cheek, the explosive menace, the vaulting pitch, the intelligence, the heartbreaking tenderness and vulnerability, the commanding presence, on and on, Gene Hackman was easily my favourite actor. RIP. “Miss Teschmacher!”‘

Gene Hackman’s heartbroken fans shared a plethora of emotional tributes to the star on Thursday following the news of his and wife Betsy Arakawa’s deaths [pictured in 1983]

Hackman and Arakawa’s deaths remain under investigation, police have said.

‘On February 26 2025 at approximately 1.45pm, 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,’ a statement said.

‘Foul play is not suspected as a factor in those deaths at this time – however, exact cause of death has not been determined. 

‘This is an active and ongoing investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.’