Gene Hackman was an American original: an everyman actor with unremarkable physical features who became exceptional through the sheer force of his authenticity. Actors can drive themselves nuts trying to be believable, to simply inhabit a scene as a human being with sincere purpose, but Hackman was only ever genuine. He was also prolific, which means that his gift was occasionally squandered in some less-than-stellar films, but we watched them anyway because the promise of a new Hackman performance was worth the time. Now that he's left us for good at the age of 95, those hours we spent watching dreck like "Loose Cannons" or "The Replacements" hardly feel like a waste.

Hackman appeared in all kinds of movies, and excelled at so many different types of roles that he was never closely associated with one particular genre. But there was something about Westerns that perfectly suited his unfussy performance style.