Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor Would’ve Looked Completely Different If He Wasn’t Hoodwinked By The Director

The world is mourning the loss of Hollywood legend Gene Hackman this morning who passed away at the age of 95 along with his wife and dog in a case that is currently under investigation. Like many fans of his work, I found myself getting nostalgic about Gene Hackman’s iconic roles in Superman, The French Connection, Get Shorty, and others and I started digging into trivia from his various roles for which he won 2 Oscars.

As a terminally online person, I figured there was no better place to start than the annals of IMDB under the ‘trivia’ section for each of Gene Hackman’s films. While there, I learned that while filming Hoosiers Gene Hackman thought it was going to bomb, wanted off the film, and was apparently miserable for the director to work with but when it came time to check out the rough cut Gene was blown away by how incredible it was. I also learned that Lex Luthor almost looked very, very different.

5 Lesser-Known Gene Hackman Stories–Trivia That Helped Shape His Legendary Career

Hackman appeared three times as Lex Luthor in the Superman franchise including in the first film in 1978 opposite Christopher Reeve. At the time, Gene’s mustache iconic. In fact, most leading men in Hollywood were sporting flavor savers in the 70s and Gene wasn’t willing to part with his for the role without some trickery.

Gene Hackman *was not* planning on shaving his mustache for the role of Lex Luthor. Had that been the case, it’s quite possible the past (nearly) 50 years of Superman films would’ve followed suit with villain sporting facial hair. Alas, director Richard Donner tricked him.

Here’s how it went down, according to IMDB: “Initially, Gene Hackman refused to shave off his mustache to play Lex Luthor. In early one-sheets of the movie, his face is featured with a mustache. Before Richard Donner and Hackman met face-to-face, Donner proposed to Hackman that if he would shave his mustache, Donner would shave his too, and Hackman agreed. It turned out later that Donner did not have a mustache at all. He wore a false moustache that he peeled off at the last moment.”

Imagine the power you must feel after wearing a fake mustache that’s convincing enough to fool Hackman into shaving his own. That’s Lex Luthor levels of power right there.

Behind-The-Scenes In ‘The French Connection’

Gene’s first Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role was for role as Jimmy Doyle in The French Connection. In preparation for that role, he and his fellow actors ‘went on patrol’ for a month masquerading as cops, while riding around with cops… Kinda weird, but it got stranger.

In one instance, he helped actual cops restrain a suspect into a cop car and he was, for a while, worried that the suspect would sue him personally for impersonating an officer. Also, the films main car chase scene was filmed without permits but they still got off-duty NYPD officers to control traffic for them… Imagine that happening in NYC today! Also, Steve McQueen was initially offered the starring role in the movie but declined because he didn’t want to play any more cops.

Gene Hackman Nearly Missed Out On A Second Academy Award

Gene Hackman’s second Oscar came in 1993 when he won Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his role of Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven which also won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The Unforgiven script had been floating around Hollywood for two decades when it made its way to Gene Hackman. Naturally, after reading the script Hackman said ‘nah’ and rejected the role. It wasn’t until Clint Eastwood later convinced him to sign onto the film that Gene agreed to the role and the rest was history. Once agreed to the role, Hackman modeled his Little Bill Daggett character on Daryl Gates who was Los Angeles Police Chief at the time.

7 years later, Clinton Eastwood would reveal in an interview that Gene Hackman was very concerned about the gun violence in the film. More specifically, Hackman was concerned with how the gun violence would be portrayed because he didn’t want to see the violence glorified on camera.

Gene Hackman In ‘Get Shorty’

Keeping with the trend above, when Gene Hackman was presented with the role of Harry Zimm in Get Shorty he passed on the part. Hackman turned it down because he didn’t want to act in comedies.

Director Barry Sonnenfeld, who also did Men in Black among others, told Gene “that’s exactly the attitude he wanted from him on-set” for Get Shorty. Saying that if he played the role straight instead of trying to be funny they could let the audience decide if the film was funny or not.

Oncethe movie was out, Gene Hackman would say that “the scene where Chili (John Travolta) recites lines from Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958) while watching it in a theater was one of the most engaging things” he had ever seen on film.

A Master At His Craft

According to IMDB Trivia, Hackman didn’t do any reshoots for his parts in the second film. All of the scenes he appeared in were shot by Richard Donner and any scenes that involved director Richard Lester (who supplanted Donner) were filmed by a stand-in. He stood on business and stood by director Richard Donner.

There was also another hair story from the Superman sequel… Lex Luthor is famously bald. Gene Hackman was not. In fact, when he was seen in public in recent months he still had a visible head of hair underneath his hat.

Hackman refused to wear bald caps for his role as Lex Luthor but instead wore awful wigs “that would imply baldness” for the films. According to IMDB Trivia, the only time he ever agreed to wear a bald cap is in the prison scenes.

Gene Hackman, ‘Mississippi Burning,’ Awards, And Missed Opportunities

Gene Hackman received an Academy Award nomination for Mississippi Burning, being nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his role as Anderson. That nomination and film would rob him of a potential award on a future project because, as the lore goes, he saw a violent clip of his role on screen at the 1989 Oscars and after that decided he would no longer participate in violent films.

That meant he would pass up the opportunity to direct 1991’s Silence of the Lambs which won 5 Oscars including Best Picture. However, Clint Eastwood was able to convince Hackman to sign on for Unforgiven and give up his stance toward on-screen violence for the role.