Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is a two-time Academy Award-winning American actor. He came to fame during the 1970s, after his role in The French Connection, and continued to appear in major roles in Hollywood films, including Harry Caul in The Conversation, Norman Dale in Hoosiers and Brill in Enemy of the State.

A child of a broken home, Gene Hackman left home at 16 for a 3-year hitch with the Marines. Moving to New York after being discharged, he worked in a number of menial jobs before studying journalism and television production on the G.I. Bill at the University of Illinois. Hackman would be over 30 years old when he finally decided to take his chance at acting by enrolling at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. Legend says that Hackman and Dustin Hoffman were voted "least likely to succeed." Hackman next moved back to New York, where he worked in summer stock and off-Broadway. In 1964, he was cast as the young suitor in the Broadway stage play "Any Wednesday." This role would lead to him being cast in the small role of Norman in Lilith (1964), starring Warren Beatty. When Beatty was casting for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), he cast Hackman as Buck Barrow, Clyde's brother. That role earned Hackman a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, an award for which he would again be nominated in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). In 1972, he won the Oscar for his role as Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in French Connection, The (1971). At 40 years old, Hackman was a Hollywood star whose work would rise to the heights with Night Moves (1975) and Bite the Bullet (1975), or fall to the depths with Poseidon Adventure, The (1972) and Eureka (1984). Hackman is a versatile actor who can play comedy (the blind man in Young Frankenstein (1974)) or villainy (the evil Lex Luthor in Superman (1978)). He is the doctor who puts his work above people in Extreme Measures (1996) and the captain on the edge of nuclear destruction in Crimson Tide (1995). After initially turning down the role of Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992), Hackman finally accepted it as a different slant on the western that interested him. For his performance he won the Oscar and Golden Globe and decided that he wasn't tired of westerns after all. He has since appeared in Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Wyatt Earp (1994), and Quick and the Dead, The (1995).