For now, he says he's retired, splitting his time between painting and writing.

···

GQ: You've got to do one more movie.

**Hackman: **I don't know. If I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything and just one or two people.

**GQ: There are so many guys who want to see you back in the movies. **

**Hackman: **Well, that's very kind.

GQ: You have to do it. Your hero James Cagney was retired forever and then came back to do Ragtime. Can't you do one more?

**Hackman: **[laughs] Well...

**GQ: Why do you love Cagney so much? **

**Hackman: **There was a kind of energy about him, and he was totally different from anyone I'd ever seen in my life. Having been brought up in the Midwest, I didn't know those New York people. I thought he was terrific. Everything he did had a life to it. He was a bad guy in most of the films, and yet there was something lovable about him and creative.

GQ: You have this reputation of the brawler. Are you still an angry young man?

**Hackman: **Probably. I hate that idea, because it's the antithesis of the creative spirit and what it takes to be a creative person. But you do, sometimes, what happens in the spur of the moment. I, unfortunately, kind of react.

GQ: When's the last time you threw a punch?

**Hackman: **A real punch? I suppose it's been ten years.

GQ: Was it at a wall or at a person?

**Hackman: **A person. It was silly. It was that traffic thing. _[In 2001, when he was 71, Hackman had a fender bender in Hollywood. He got out to inspect the damage to his car, and next thing you know, he takes a swing at the guy and has him on the pavement.] _

**GQ: Is it true that when you were a boy, your mother took you to see movies and she told you that she wanted "to see you do that someday"? **

**Hackman: **She did say that. I would have been 10. Things parents say to children are oftentimes not heard, but in some cases you pick up on things that your parent would like to see you have done. Unfortunately my mom never saw me act, so I'm sorry for that, but that's the way it is.

GQ: If you could show her just one of your movies, what would you show her?

**Hackman: **I Never Sang for My Father. I thought it was a sensitive picture about family and relationships, and I think she would have been proud and happy to see that. You're fortunate sometimes to be able to do something in life that defines who you are and who your parents may have wanted you to be.

**GQ: Your new historical novel, Payback at Morning Peak, opens with a boy who loses his father. And you have a scene in which he sees what you describe as "the sad bundle" that is his dead mother. **

**Hackman: **Yeah, they tell you not to write about your mom in books, but I don't know how you keep from doing that.

GQ: You have the father telling the boy, "Be the man I taught you to be." Are there any things that your father taught you?

**Hackman: **I had a troubled youth. [laughs] Any lines, or any comfort, direction, or things of that nature, would've come from my mother. She and my grandmother were important.

**GQ: Were you closer to your mom or to your grandmother? **