Liza Minnelli blasted “downright rude” Gene Hackman more than one year after his death.
In the “Cabaret” star’s new memoir, “Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!,” she recalled Hackman’s behavior while they were filming “Lucky Lady,” which was released in 1975.
“I don’t like to whine, but Stanley [Donen] later shared publicly that Gene was very dismissive of me during the film,” Minnelli writes.
“It’s hard to go to work when the chemistry is absent,” she adds.
“I think it’s fair to say that Gene was downright rude.”
In “Lucky Lady,” Minnelli, 79, starred as Claire, a widow who begins smuggling alcohol with her lover, Walker (portrayed by Burt Reynolds), and his friend, Kibby (played by Hackman), during the Prohibition era.
The trio gets into a messy love triangle as they try to avoid going to jail for their illegal crimes.
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The film, directed by Donen, flopped at the box office and received negative reviews from critics.
Roger Ebert gave the comedy-drama two stars out of four, calling it “a big, expensive, good-looking flop of a movie; rarely is so much effort expended on a movie so inconsequential.”
Minnelli’s revelation comes more than a year after Hackman died on Feb. 18, six days after his wife, Betsy Arakawa, passed away. The Oscar winner was 95, and the classical pianist was 65.
Officials believe the “French Connection” star had been unknowingly living with his wife’s dead body for days.
Hackman died of hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, with “advanced Alzheimer’s disease” being a contributing factor, while Arakawa’s death was caused by hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare rodent-transmitted virus.
The couple’s partially mummified bodies were discovered inside their cluttered home on February 25, 2025.
