How Clint Eastwood Persuaded Gene Hackman to Break a Promise — and Win an Oscar

When Clint Eastwood was getting ready to make Unforgiven, he knew the movie needed a strong villain.

He wanted Gene Hackman to play Bill Daggett, the cruel sheriff who ruled the small town of Big Whiskey through fear and intimidation. Hackman thought it was a great role, but there was a problem. He had promised himself and his family that he wouldn’t take on any more violent roles.

Hackman’s career in the years before Unforgiven was full of action and thrillers. He starred in The French Connection, Uncommon Valor, Target, No Way Out, Mississippi Burning, and The Package.

All of them had a good amount of gunplay, blood, and violence. His daughters didn’t enjoy seeing him in those kinds of films. According to screenwriter David Webb Peoples, “Gene’s daughters didn’t like all the violent movies he was doing,” and that had a big influence on the actor. Hackman was at a stage in his career where family mattered more than work.

So when Eastwood offered him the role in Unforgiven, Hackman hesitated. He admitted later, “I swore I would never be involved in a picture with this much violence in it.” At first, it looked like he would turn it down.

But Eastwood had a way of making him see the story differently. The director explained that the movie was not meant to celebrate violence. Instead, it showed violence as something ugly, painful, and destructive.

William Munny, played by Eastwood himself, was a man trying to leave that life behind. Daggett, on the other hand, used violence as a tool to control people. That difference made the story worth telling.

Hackman thought more about it and began to see what Eastwood meant. He said, “The more I read it, the more I came to understand the purpose of the film, the more fascinated I became.” What looked like just another violent Western was really a story about the cost of violence, not the thrill of it. Hackman accepted the role, and it turned out to be one of the most important decisions of his career.

Unforgiven was released in 1992 and became a major success. It cost about $14 million to make and earned more than $159 million at the box office. Critics praised the acting, especially from Eastwood and Hackman, along with the themes, directing, and cinematography.

At the Academy Awards, the film won four Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director for Eastwood, Best Supporting Actor for Hackman, and Best Film Editing. Eastwood was also nominated for Best Actor but lost to Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman.

The film has since been remembered as one of the greatest Westerns ever made. In 2004, it was added to the U.S. National Film Registry as a movie that was culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

Reviewers like Jack Mathews of the Los Angeles Times called it “the finest classical Western to come along since perhaps John Ford’s The Searchers.” Time’s Richard Corliss described it as “Eastwood’s meditation on age, repute, courage, heroism—on all those burdens he has been carrying with such grace for decades.”

Even though Hackman almost turned it down, his performance in Unforgiven became one of his most celebrated roles. Thanks to Eastwood’s convincing words, Hackman broke his promise about violent films and walked away with an Oscar.

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