There are three names from the big leagues of Hollywood: Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall y Dustin Hoffman. And they have much more in common than success on the big screen. Were friends even before dreaming that they would become movie stars Oscar winners.
Duvall and Hackman were born 25 days apart. Hackman came into the world on January 30, 1930 and Duvall on the 5th of the same month and year. But not only were they contemporaries, they also led parallel lives until his last days.
Duvall died at age 95 on February 15. from 2026just one year after Hackman found dead in his New Mexico home with his wife Betsy Arakawa65.
The autopsy determined that Hackman passed away on February 18, 2025 due to cardiac arrest, in addition to the cognitive deterioration he suffered several years ago after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
In the midst of the repercussions and tributes in Hollywood to the careers of both, the true story that unites them resurfaced. In an iconic interview with Vanity Fair dating back to 2004, they said that they met in New York in the ’50s during the dawn of their acting vocation.
Almost at the same time he came into their lives Dustin Hoffmanwho is currently 88 years old, and was always treated as their younger brother, whom they protected because they felt identified with all the rejections he suffered before shining.
An itinerant childhood and the feeling of «not fitting in»: the friendship of three Hollywood stars
In 1957 Hackam was studying theater at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He was 27 years old, a former Marine who was almost six feet tall and described himself as a «big, clumsy» person. He was married to his then wife, Faye Maltesea bank secretary, and he had several jobs while looking for his opportunity as an actor.
Dustin Hoffman, a 5-foot-10 19-year-old who felt self-conscious about the size of his nose and height, took the same classes as Hackman.
«There was something about him that, like he had a secret. You just knew he was going to do something,» Hackman described in that iconic interview with Vanity Fair.
When they began to talk, they knew that despite the eight years of age difference they had, they had grown up in a similar way, with very strict parents and constant moving.
Dustin’s father, Harry Hoffman, worked multiple jobs to support his family, from ditch digger to Columbia Pictures prop man to set designer to founder of the Harry Hoffman furniture company, which went bankrupt.
As a result of these attempts to advance economically, Dustin lived in six neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and therefore, in six different schools where he had to adapt again and again.
«My house was full of tension. At dinners after a family fight, his father, mother, grandmother and my brother would sit in absolute silence, and I, at eight years old, would repeat the dialogue of the fight, playing all the roles. Everyone laughed and the tension was relieved,» Hoffman said.
As for Hackman, he felt that acting was a way to survive and face his insecurities. «I had never thought about acting, but it was a great feeling to break the collective anger in my living room, which made me feel that I mattered and that I had an identity in the house,» explained the protagonist of Tootsie.
Hackman also attended several schools, but unlike his friend, he withdrew into himself. He never went to a school dance or formed a stable group of friends.
«I think because I was shy I felt insecure, and acting seemed like a way to overcome that. To become someone«, acknowledged the actor who much later would star in the classic Contact in France.
When Gene was 13, his father abandoned the family.. He could never forget the moment his dad waved to him while he was playing in the street.
«It was a real goodbye, 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 a small gesture can mean«Hackman reflected.
He moved in with his mother and grandmother, but living together was very difficult. At the age of 16 he spent a night in jail for stealing candy and soda, and when he got out he escaped forever.
Robert Duvall slept on the kitchen floor of Gene Hackman and his wife
Hackman lied about his age and enlisted in the Marine Corps, where he served four and a half years in China, Japan and Hawaii.. He also tried his luck in show business as an announcer on the Armed Forces Radio, but after a serious motorcycle accident, he was discharged, and in 1951 he settled in New York with the hope of becoming an actor.
Thus he arrived at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he became friends with Hoffman. They both felt out of place. «We hated everyone else,» they admitted. Gene did not agree with the acting teachers’ approach, and at the end of the first semester he was fired.
That rejection did not stop him, on the contrary, it filled him with more determination. He got an unpaid internship at a theater in Bellport, Long Island, building sets, looking for props, installing lights, and in one production there happened to be a role available, that of Marco, a strong, silent Italian worker.
Director Ulu Grosbard of the Yale School of Drama cast Hackman. «Gene is a complex guy, very intelligent, with a generous spirit and social charm, and a certain feeling of being tormented by ghosts and things from the past. That is part of what he brings to his work,» defined Grosbard, who told him that he should persevere in his dream.
Howard Duvall, a naval officer who rose to rear admiral, also resettled his family in several cities and ended up in Annapolis, Maryland.
Robert also had to adjust to numerous schools and excelled as an athlete wherever he went. In his family everyone was a singer or artist, but it took him a while to discover that he had the same talent.
His brother, William Duvall, described him as «a problem child who had a rebel inside him». He felt lost, and in 1955, after two years in the army, he moved to New York to study theater. He was accepted into the Neighborhood Playhouse.
In 1958 Hoffman arrived in New York with $50 in his pocket and an invitation to sleep on the Hackmans’ kitchen floor for a few days. He was there three weeks, until Gene and Faye relocated him to another apartment.
«They were good years, not knowing what the future would bring. All those friends, dreaming, it was a lot of fun,» Duvall recalled. That apartment became a hostel for actors and opera singers who stayed for several nights or weeks.
The three young actors auditioned all the time, while working temporary jobs to survive: Dustin as a typist and clerk at various stores; Gene sold shoes and moved furniture; Robert worked in warehouses and ran errands in post offices.
«In those days it was a question of which of us was poorer at the time, and the other two helped him«Hackman said.
His subsequent filmographies consolidated his acting diversity: Dustin shone in Tootsie, Midnight Cowboy y Rain Man; Hackman andn The French Connection, The Conversation y Superman.
While Robert in Apocalypse Now, The Godfather y The Apostle. Decades later, in 2003, Hackman and Hoffman agreed on Runaway Jurywhile Duvall starred in Secondhand Lions.
A quote from Hoffman defines the importance of acting in his life: «If I tried to define what it means, it would be like being more alive, because that cloud of mortality suddenly disappears. You are in a place of timelessness. You are free, really free. There is nothing else we want, and our work gives us the opportunity to have that.»
