Gene Hackman, who was died at 95, was a stunner in great movies and the best thing in many bad ones — a rumpled, roiling, always complex and often combustible presence who helped define the New Hollywood of the late ’60s and ’70s before going on to a varied and generous career.

Though he’d had small roles in movies and on television throughout the early 1960s (he’d been a Marine before that, and had studied journalism and television production on the G.I. Bill), Hackman was 36 before anyone really took notice.

One of the greatest American actors of the 20th century was voted “least likely to succeed” by his first theater school, wasn’t a star until he was 40 and possessed a face he once described as “your everyday mineworker.