Gene Hackman died a week after his wife

Actor Gene Hackman's death was due to natural causes. Autopsy results were released on Friday, revealing that the actor died of heart disease. His wife died of a hantavirus infection a week before him. The bodies of Hackman and his wife were found dead at their home in New Mexico. Authorities initially considered the deaths suspicious, so they opened an investigation. Initial tests to determine the cause of death ruled out carbon monoxide poisoning.

With the autopsy results now final, authorities have reported that Hackman, whose body was found in the hallway of the home, died of coronary heart disease. The autopsy also reveals that the actor had severe symptoms of Alzheimer's, something that doctors believe would have contributed decisively to his death. Hackman, 95, died a week after his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 65. In this case, the autopsy considers that the death was caused by a pulmonary syndrome caused by a hantavirus infection. His body was found in the bathroom, next to an open medicine bottle and with pills scattered on the floor. Hantavirus is very rare but is usually lethal, spread by mouse feces.

With his appearance of an ordinary man and without affectation, Hackman arrived in the cinema during the sixties, just when American directors were opening up to realism and the new European currents. American cinema found in him a versatile and credible actor, capable of revising the archetype of the tough man configured during the golden age of Hollywood by Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney, but also of showing his fragility as a vulnerable man. It was with The French connection (1970), the fast-paced thriller with which William Friedkin dynamited the narrative conventions of important North American cinema, the almost documentary style of the French Nouvelle Vague, for which Hackman won the Oscar for his performance.