Posted on 03/02/2025 2:22:46 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman was found dead last week at age 95. Following news of his death, a resurfaced 2001 interview with James Lipton for Inside the Actors Studio began making the rounds on social media. A clip of the interview focuses on the lasting pain Hackman suffered when his father abandoned the family.
Lipton asked Hackman how old he was when his father left. Hackman replied, “I was about 13 I guess. I was down the street playing with some guys, and he drove by and kind of waved and that was it.” Hackman appeared to get choked up before joking,
“It’s only been 65 years or so.”
On another occasion, he said of his father’s leaving,
“It was a real adios. It was so precise. Maybe that’s why I became an actor. I doubt I would have become so sensitive to human behavior if that hadn’t happened to me as a child — if I hadn’t realized how much one small gesture can mean.”
After marrying and starting a family, Hackman’s long absences created both physical and emotional distance between him and his own children. They were estranged at times, but in later years, they would reconnect.
Fathers play a crucial role in the family, but their importance is often undervalued by society. According to the National Center for Fathering, “[C]hildren from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involved in drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems.”
(Excerpt) Read more at liveaction.org ...
Wellll, I had a mom died of cancer age ten, four younger siblings, step dad. Yeah it was very hard but there was resilience of youth.
I did hunt down my real dad when I was twenty-eight. Not a bad guy. Both were too young.
Not having a mom or a real dad made me very independent.
You stay classy.
Prayers.
I never liked my dad but he was there.
“WTF dude, you got to 95 and were STILL hung up on family stuff that happened 80 years ago?”
That sounds like something a person would say who did not take his responsibilities as a parent very seriously. Also sounds like what someone would say who used the failures of his own parents as an excuse to treat these responsibilities lightly.
Poor or absent parenting leaves someone else to make up for the job the parents won’t or couldn’t do. If no one steps up, which is often the case, children are likely to grow up and become menaces to society.
The relationship between a parent and child is supposed to be one of mutual love and support. Children are vulnerable and need nurture and protection. So are the elderly. The natural relationship should lead to a role reversal in which the children care for their elderly parents when they can no longer care for themselves.
Actually, Gene Hackman’s father used to beat him. Even as an adult, Hackman was prone to combativeness and would sometimes seek out bar fights. His accomplishments though show that he got past the hurts and defects of his childhood.
The thing’s my father did still bothers me..
I am reading for the 3rd time Pat Conroy’s “The Death of Santini”. You’ll remember he wrote “The Great Santini” - growing up with a Marine pilot father who beat his wife and children as if it was as normal as sitting down to a meal.
That book was putting to bed the feelings he had for his father. He himself suffered mental breakdowns and no wonder. He’s no longer with us but what a mind and what a way with words he had - like no one else....
Nearly all the books he wrote were a portrait into his life. He was the oldest of 7 children and 5 of them would try to kill themselves before the age of 40 - one succeeded when he jumped off a building in Charleston, SC...
He said he hated his father when he was still in diapers; before he even knew there was a word for what he felt. He was able to write this book and put it away!!!
Nobody can understand such an upbringing but Gene Hackman was able to come out of it with great talent and no doubt after suffering as much as Pat Conroy and his siblings did.
Didn’t mean to hijack your thread and I thank you for posting it.
Thanks. I’m good. Turns out, I’m pretty resilient. But who knew, going in.
Fathers give conditional love which means you can earn his love and lose his love. When the father leaves when kids are young it feels like a permanent fail. Very cruel.
That’s the spirit!
This post was from days ago but I felt that the message needed to be addressed.
REAL ADULTS can be affected by childhood loss or abuse. Yeah, you can forgive the individual, but the results remain. You can recover. Your life goes on. But what happened to you doesn’t suddenly evaporate.
It’s like getting cancer. You can recover, but the experience affects you forever. You are never the same.
You are not a loser or a child if cancer affects you for the rest of your life. And you are not a loser or a child if parental abuse or abandonment affects you for the rest of your life.
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