NEW ORLEANS -- It took 45 years for longtime friends Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman to find a project that could pair them on screen.

In Runaway Jury, which opens Friday, Hoffman plays a dedicated defence lawyer and Hackman a ruthless jury consultant.

"Dusty and I have circled around several projects before this, but in each case Dusty would make such outrageous salary demands the films would fall through and I'd be left without a job," says Hackman, taking a playful jab at his friend during their joint press conference for Runaway Jury.

In the original screenplay of the John Grisham novel, the lawyer and jury consultant never meet.

Hackman was cast first.

Hoffman was added to the cast just weeks before filming began in New Orleans.

"When (director) Gary Fleder realized this was the first time Dustin and I had worked together, but that we didn't have a scene together, he called in the writers and had them create one for us," recalls Hackman.

The scene in which the two men meet briefly in a courthouse washroom was filmed weeks after Hackman and Hoffman had completed their other scenes.

"It was a bit tense the day we filmed that scene. It's a dialogue-heavy scene and quite emotional and Dusty and I really wanted to give our best.

"We admitted to each other that we hadn't slept the night before.

"It took a few takes to get what we wanted. We both felt the pressure," admits Hackman.

"When we started working, it didn't feel like it was the first time, which in a sense it wasn't."

The two friends met when they were taking acting classes at the Pasadena Playhouse.

"In school, Dusty and I did a production of Of Mice and Men together. I played Lennie to his George.

"Then there was the time we did a (workshop) production of Taming of the Shrew in which we were double-cast as Petruchio.

"We had to wear the same tights. I played Petruchio in the first act and Dusty played him in the second act. It must have startled people."

Another classmate and close friend at the Pasadena Playhouse was Robert Duvall, who Hackman says, saved him from the worst roommate he ever had.

"When we all moved to New York, Dusty didn't have a job or an apartment, so my wife and I said he could stay with us for a few days until he found a place and a job."

Days turned into weeks.

"He was absolutely the worst roommate imaginable.

"We had to hose down the place and sweep it out after he took his shower in the mornings, which he did regularly while we were trying to make breakfast."

As Hackman likes to recall, he eventually loaned Hoffman to Duvall.

"I was working days for the Greenwich Village Moving Company and Bobby Duvall was working nights for the post office, so it seemed more logical for Dusty to be staying with him because they would never really have to meet."

The three struggling actors took small roles in off-Broadway plays and kept auditioning for films and TV shows shot in New York.

In 1963, Hackman got a small role in the TV movie Ride With Terror and the following year was cast in the Warren Beatty film, Lilith.

When Beatty was preparing to shoot Bonnie and Clyde four years later, he remembered Hackman and cast him as Clyde's brother, Buck Barrow.

The role earned Hackman an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor and kick-started a career that includes more than 80 films, Oscars for The French Connection and Unforgiven and additional nominations for I Never Sang For My Father and Mississippi Burning.

"I would have been happy doing nothing but off-off-Broadway shows," says Hackman. "I never wanted to be a movie star. I just wanted to be an actor. I just wanted to work.

"I count myself one of the lucky ones to have found so many projects that allowed me to prove myself."

Hackman says young actors often ask him how to get started.

"I tell them to go to New York and find a good acting teacher, but that's not what they want to hear.

"The want me to tell them how to become a film star and that's something no one can teach you. It happens for you or it doesn't. You're lucky or you're not."

Hackman says he still gets nervous every time he's preparing to shoot a new scene.

"I get a kind of opening night jitters and I think that's part of the reason I'm still in the business.

"There is still something at stake. I don't just show up and collect my salary. I'm not a day player. I never have been.

"The thrill of this acting thing for me has always been that there is nothing else like it. I'll keep doing it until I lose that thrill or until the offers stop coming.

"If that happens, I could always go back to working at Howard Johnson's. That's one of many jobs I had when I was a struggling actor in New York."

Hackman insists success hasn't changed him as an actor.

"I still approach my craft the same way. (Success) has changed me maybe as a person.

"There are a variety of different things that money brings with it, and I think that has impacted on me personally, but hopefully it hasn't changed me as an actor."

There has been talk for almost two decades of Hackman reprising his Oscar-winning turn as detective Popeye Doyle in a third French Connection film.

"I doubt that's going to happen. Five years ago there was a project. It fell through and, I think, so did interest in Popeye."


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