Gene Hackman

Born: 30th January 1930
Where: San Bernadino, California

The accomplished actor won his two Academy Awards for roles that demonstrate his range - the good guy in The French Connection and the baddie in Unforgiven.

During his five-decade long career he has also been Oscar nominated for Mississippi Burning, Bonnie and Clyde and I Never Sang for My Father.

Despite accepted less challenging roles as he ages gracefully (Behind Enemy Lines, Runaway Jury), movies like David Mamet's Heist show he can still deliver.

Born Eugene Hackman and raised by his maternal grandmother, he left home at 16 for three years to enlist in the US Marines.

Trained as a radio operator, he served in China where his radio background help land him work as a disc jockey.

After discharge, he studied radio presenting in New York before - at the relatively late age of 30 - trying his hand at acting, enrolling at California's Pasadena Playhouse.

He returned to New York where he studied under the tutelage of George Morrison, a former instructor at the Lee Strasberg Institute who trained the actor in the famed 'Method' approach.

In 1961 he joined the improvisational troupe The Premise which led to a role in the Broadway play Any Wednesday and his feature debut in Lilith with Warren Beatty.

Three years later when Beatty was casting for his film Bonnie and Clyde, he chose Hackman for the role of Buck Barrow.

He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting actor, an award for which he was again nominated three years later in I Never Sang for My Father.

However, it was the grizzled role of tough cop Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection that made his named �and landed him a best actor Oscar.

He became a star-and won a Best Actor Oscar in 1972, for his role as tough policeman Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle in the hit thriller The French Connection.

Subsequent roles included the priest in The Poseidon Adventure, Harry Caul in the groundbreaking The Conversation and the celebrated part of Lex Luther in Superman.

He went on to play several memorable roles in the 80s, including a corrupt government official in No Way Out and an FBI agent in Mississippi Burning, for which he picked up yet another Best Actor Oscar nomination.

Hackman considered retirement more than once, particularly after suffering a near heart attack and undergoing surgery in 1990.

He made a comeback in 1992, winning a Golden Globe and second Oscar (for Supporting Actor) as the sadistic sheriff in Clint Eastwood's Western Unforgiven.

His profile high, he enjoyed success as Capt Frank Ramsey in Crimson Tide and Harry Zimm in the hit comedy Get Shorty with John Travolta.

He provided a winning portraya of a surveillance expert in the conspiracy thriller Enemy of the State and also appeared in the crime drama Under Suspicion.

In 2000, he starred as a football coach in The Replacements, and the following year had a featured role in Heartbreakers, about a mother-daughter con artist team, played by Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

The convoluted but rivetting crime caper Heist made the most of his talents but he was on autopilot opposite Owen Wilson in the war drama Behind Enemy Lines.

Hackman was on form as the patriarch of a dysfunctional family of geniuses in The Royal Tenenbaums but didn't stretch himself in John Grisham's formulaic Runaway Jury.