Wes Anderson says Gene Hackman was ‘furious’ about his Royal Tenenbaums salary: ‘We had friction’

Wes Anderson has opened up about his fractious working relationship with the late actor Gene Hackman.

Hollywood legend Hackman was found dead at his home in New Mexico earlier this year with his wife Betsy Arakawa.

It later emerged that the French Connection star had died from complications from Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 95, while Arakawa had contracted hantavirus, a rare illness spread by rats.

Looking back on his experience of working with Hackman on the 2001 comedy drama The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson, 56, admitted that the veteran actor was “furious” about the fact that the cast all received a flat fee.

“Gene was very annoyed about the money,” the director told The Times. “He was furious. Also, he didn’t want to do the film anyway. I talked him into it – I just didn’t go away.”

“And everybody else said yes to the salary, so Gene just went with it – and that just became our way.”

The Royal Tenenbaums was Anderson’s third feature film and starred Hackman as the eccentric patriarch of a dysfunctional, upper class family based in New York, with Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson playing his children.

Anderson, who was 32 years old at the time of the film’s release, said that Hackman didn’t say goodbye to him after the production wrapped, and suggested that his comparative youth was probably “annoying” to the older star.

“Not a word – in fact, he left without saying goodbye,” Anderson said, when asked if he had kept in touch with the late star.

“He was grumpy – we had friction,” he continued. “He didn’t enjoy it. I was probably too young and it was annoying to him.”

Anderson added that Hackman did eventually like the finished movie, “but he told me he didn’t understand it when we were shooting. I wish I’d shown him 10 minutes, early on. Then, maybe, he would have said, ‘OK, I get it’”.

The director’s frequent collaborator Bill Murray previously described Hackman as a “tough nut” who was “really rough” on Anderson while filming The Royal Tenenbaums.

“We can say it now, but he was a tough guy,” Murray, who played Hackman’s on-screen son-in-law in the film, said. “Older, great actors do not give young directors much of a chance.

“They’re really rough on them, and Gene was really rough on Wes.”

Anderson’s latest film The Phoenician Scheme is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival today (18 May) and will be released in UK cinemas on 23 May.