The 97th Oscar Awards paid a tribute to Gene Hackman. His Unforgiven co-star Morgan Freeman introduced the honour for his “dear friend.” 

The speech preceded the ceremony’s in memoriam, honouring the celebrities who have died in the previous year.

“This week, our community lost a giant. And I lost a dear friend, Gene Hackman,” Freeman began his speech with these words. 

“I had the pleasure of working alongside Gene on two films, Unforgiven and Under Suspicion. Like everyone who ever shared a scene with him, I learnt he was a generous performer and a man whose gifts elevated everyone’s work.”

“Gene always said, ‘I don’t think about legacy. I just hope people remember me as someone who tried to do good work,'” Freeman continued.

“I think I speak for us all when I say, ‘Gene, you will be remembered for that, and so much more.’ Rest in peace, my friend,” Morgan Freeman remembered him. 

Hackman, 95, was found dead alongside his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 65. The couple’s bodies were discovered inside their Santa Fe residence.

Hackman won two trophies from the Academy. The first came in 1972, for starring as the obsessive narcotics investigator Jimmy Popeye Doyle in William Friedkin’s thriller The French Connection.

His second win came in 1993, for his supporting turn as another rancid officer of the law, Sheriff Little Bill Daggett, in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven.

Along with those two wins, Hackman earned three other Oscar nominations, in supporting for Bonnie and Clyde in 1968 and I Never Sang for My Father in 1971, as well as a lead nod for Mississippi Burning in 1989.