Like Pesci, he might not have been in his "prime" - that'd be the 70s, when he was as at home playing complicated cop Popeye Doyle and uncomplicated pantomime villain Lex Luthor - but in the early days of the new millenium, the notoriously prickly Gene Hackman seemed to be going through a latter-day career renaissance. He had already reprised his role from the paranoia classic The Conversation in Enemy of the State, and won a Golden Globe for his more grounded (or just OTT in a different way) part as the patriarch in Wes Anderson's masterpiece, The Royal Tenenbaums. But that's pretty much the last we've heard from Hackman. In films, at least. Over the past few years he has published three historical novels in collaboration with an undersea archaeologist, along with a Western book. In 2004, during an interview with Larry King, Hackman admitted he had no acting roles lined up, but it wasn't until he was promoting his third book in 2008 that he officially confirmed he had retired. Even then, nobody made a big song-and-dance about it. For most, Hackman just sort of dropped off the map. Which might be because his final screen role to date was opposite Ray Romano in the awful comedy Welcome to Mooseport, and we're all secretly hoping he'll do something else, and go out on the high he had been building too.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
