If given the option, Gene Hackman would prefer to remodel a home than construct one from the ground up. I imagine it’s similar to acting, I read between the lines, he claims.
From the quiet eavesdropper in The Talk to the evil Lex Luthor in Superman, Hackman has played a variety of roles throughout his career. He was nominated for three Oscars in total, most recently for his performance as an FBI agent in Mississippi Burning. He received an Oscar in 1971 for Such French Connection. He has spent the majority of his entire professional life hopping between jobs and locations. So have relocated from one house to another, and at this time, he is in the ninth one that he has built, all in the same spirit.
I have no idea what is up with me, he quips wryly.
I suppose I enjoy the process, and once it’s finished, it’s over.
Just a few miles to the north of Santa Fe, on twelve acres of the pion-covered hilltop, stands his newest home. It has a 360-degree view that includes the mountain ranges of Colorado. Upon working on a few movies there, he became drawn to Santa Fe. He claims that it contained some sort of magic. Because of its location, he chose the site, and then he hired Santa Fe architects Harry Daple with Stephen Samuelson of Studio Arquitectura to assist him to turn the old house into the intimate setting he had in mind.
The house was awful, Samuelson claims. It was a block building from the 1950s that had been abandoned and had deteriorated. However, the location was excellent and the foundation was firmly in place. The house is shared by Hackman as well as Betsy Arakawa, who has no interest in restoring the original pueblo style.
Instead, they placed a higher value on elements like French doors, highly open floor plans, with bright, soaring space—achievable qualities that are not necessarily possible in conventional adobe buildings. As a result, the home is a fusion of various architectural forms, including Spanish Baroque, colonial New Mexico, and Pueblo. It’s not at all purist, according to Samuelson. It’s more basic, like a barn that has been transformed in to a house, big and intimate all at once.
The initial step toward increasing space was to remove 90% of the roof so that in some areas of the home, the ceilings might be lifted as far as twenty feet. To fulfill Hackman’s desire for spacious rooms, the internal areas were redesigned and walls were torn down.
An ample living space with tree-trunk columns, opulent sofas, and a cutting-edge sound system to fill the space with the music Hackman enjoys became the focal point of the home, which consisted of three compact rooms. According to Hackman, I wanted a large area with a great-hall vibe, with smaller rooms opening off of it, not blocked over with a lot of walls. It’s different from my prior homes, she said. The Montecito residence sees Architectural Digest, November 1982 was exceedingly formal.
The interior rooms were finished by Hackman with a filmmaker’s eye for illusion. What he sought was the nuance of a home that had been meticulously polished over many years, developing its assortment of various coatings and patinas.
The home is new, but we attempted to restore it to a century or earlier because of its newness, he says. The plaster was excellent, but I needed water stains to indicate leakage over time. I wanted to add some smoke-like shadows on the application in several spots.
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