By Kayla Olaya
Two-time Academy Award-winning actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, have been found dead inside their New Mexico home alongside their dog.
The couple had been dead for some time when their bodies were discovered in different rooms, according to investigators.
Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa have been found dead inside their New Mexico home. Credit: WireImage
Hackman, 95, was found inside a mudroom, while 63-year-old Arakawa was found in a bathroom next to a space heater, authorities wrote in a search warrant.
Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Denise Avila said there was no indication that any of them had been shot or had other types of wounds.
The New Mexico Gas Co is working with the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department in the investigation, spokesperson Tim Korte told The Associated Press.
Earlier, Avila said deputies responded to a welfare request at the home on Wednesday afternoon local time (Thursday morning AEDT) and found the pair.
Another county spokesperson, Adan Mendoza, confirmed the news to local media, though did not provide a cause of death, and said there was no immediate indication of foul play.
Hackman, a former marine known for his raspy voice, appeared in more than 80 films, as well as on television and the stage during a lengthy career that started in the early 1960s.
He earned his first Oscar nomination for his breakout role as the brother of bank robber Clyde Barrow in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde. He was also nominated for best supporting actor in 1971 for I Never Sang for My Father.
It was his turn as Popeye Doyle, the rumpled New York detective chasing international drug dealers in director William Friedkin’s thriller The French Connection, that assured his stardom and a best actor Academy Award.
Credit: SMH
He also won a best supporting actor Oscar in 1993 as a mean sheriff in the Clint Eastwood western Unforgiven, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as an FBI agent in the 1988 historical drama Mississippi Burning.
Hackman could come across on the screen as menacing or friendly, working with a face that he described to The New York Times in 1989 as that of “your everyday mine worker”.
A method actor, he drew from his personal experience to flesh out a role. His characters were sometimes raw and violent and ranged from a small-town basketball coach in the 1986 sports film Hoosiers to Superman’s archrival Lex Luthor.
He retired in his 70s, saying the parts he was offered were too grandfatherly. His last substantial role was in the 2004 comedy Welcome to Mooseport.
Living outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, Hackman was married twice and had three children – Christopher, Elizabeth Jean and Leslie Anne, with his late ex-wife, Faye Maltese, who died in 2017.
He met Arakawa in the mid-1980s, reportedly at a gym. They moved into their Santa Fe home in 1990 and married the following year.
With Reuters, AP