Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman’s pacemaker shows he probably died on Feb. 17, days before investigators found his body and that of his wife in their New Mexico home.

The Santa Fe County sheriff said the actor’s pacemaker was inspected and last showed activity nine days before his and his wife’s bodies were found.

- Gene Hackman, right, and long-time friend Daniel Lenihan, discuss their new book, "Wake of the Perdido Star," on Nov. 19, 1999, in Cloudclift Bakery, the cafe where they first dreamed up their adventure story,

I n 1956, an aspiring young actor named Gene Hackman joined the Pasadena Playhouse in California, struggling to find a way into a field he’d been fascinated with since childhood

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.

But to watch Gene Hackman, who died on Feb. 26 at age 95, almost always meant wrestling with the creeping feeling that no one or nothing could be trusted. He gravitated toward characters whose core of lies came wrapped in the truth,