Gene Hackman on wikipedia, moar at link.
Early life and military service
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Hackman lived briefly inStorm Lake, Iowa,and spent his sophomore year atStorm Lake High School.[10] He left home at age 16, lied about his age to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, and served four and a half years as a field-radio operator. Hackman was stationed in China (Qingdao and later in Shanghai). When Communist revolutionaries conquered the mainland in 1949, he was reassigned to Hawaii and Japan. After his discharge in 1951,[11] Hackman moved to New York City, where he worked at various jobs.[12] In 1962, his mother died in a fire she had accidentally started while smoking.[13] He began a study of journalism and television production at the University of Illinois under the G.I. Bill, but left without graduating and moved back to California.[14]
Speaking on his retirement in 2009, Hackman said:
The straw that broke the camel's back was actually a stress test that I took in New York. The doctor advised me that my heart wasn't in the kind of shape that I should be putting it under any stress.[57]
When asked during a GQ magazine interview in 2011 if he would ever come out of retirement to do one more film, he said he might consider it "if I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything and just one or two people."[58]He briefly came out of retirement to narrate two documentaries related to the United States Marine Corps: The Unknown Flag Raiser of Iwo Jima (2016)[59] and We, the Marines (2017).[60]
Writing
Hackman at a book signing in 2008
Together with undersea archaeologist Daniel Lenihan, Hackman wrote three historical fiction novels: Wake of the Perdido Star (1999),[61] a sea adventure of the 19th century; Justice for None (2004),[62] a Depression-era tale of murder based on a real-life crime in his boyhood town of Danville;[63] and Escape from Andersonville (2008), about a prison escape during the American Civil War.[64] His first solo effort, a story of love and revenge set in the Old West titled Payback at Morning Peak, was released in 2011.[65] His final novel Pursuit, a police thriller, followed in 2013.[66]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Hackman