Liza Minnelli memoir says Gene Hackman was ‘rude’ to star

Liza Minnelli does not have fond memories of the movie she made with the late Gene Hackman.

In her new memoir “Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!” the Oscar-winning “Cabaret” actress, 79, alleges Hackman was rude and dismissive toward her when they worked together on the 1975 film “Lucky Lady.”

Minnelli writes in the book that one of the reasons she agreed to star in the movie, despite not liking the script, was because she “respected” Hackman’s work. According to her, though, the feeling “wasn’t mutual.”

“I don’t like to whine, but [director] Stanley [Donen] later shared publicly that Gene was very dismissive of me during the film,” she writes. “It’s hard to go to work when the chemistry is absent. I think it’s fair to say that Gene was downright rude.”

Burt Reynolds also starred in “Lucky Lady,” an adventure film about rum-runners during the Prohibition era. The movie was not well-received upon release, with Roger Ebert saying at the time that “rarely is so much effort expended on a movie so inconsequential.” Writing for The New York Times, Vincent Canby also panned the movie as an “over-produced, under-thought-out production.”

Liza Minnelli, 79, and late mother Judy Garland ‘talk to each other every day’

In her book, Minnelli wrote that “Lucky Lady” suffered from a “clichéd script,” which “screamed disaster from page 1,” adding, “The powers that be made the old mistake of counting box-office receipts before the film was hatched — and we all paid the price.”

She continued, “Imagine a film where the script is lousy, the director gets increasingly frustrated, there are nasty tensions behind the scenes, and, worst of all, you have to spend months — six months — filming on an old, rickety boat off the coast of Mexico.”

Hackman and his wife were both found dead at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2025, and Minnelli writes that she “felt sad” to hear of their deaths. Donen died in 2019, while Reynolds died in 2018.

In his own 2015 memoir “But Enough About Me,” Reynolds wrote that Hackman was a “good” but “tough” actor, adding that he would sometimes tell Minnelli to shut up, and “we’d all have to walk off the set until he cooled off.”

“Gene’s not a bad guy, but he allowed Liza to distract him,” Reynolds continued. “Gene wasn’t the easiest to work with either. You’d do the rehearsal one way, and when you got to the take, he’d say, ‘You’re not gonna do it that way, are you?’ He’d do that to Liza, and she’d fall apart.”

Liza Minnelli takes jab at Lady Gaga over 2022 Oscars moment

In Minnelli’s memoir, the star opens up about her mother Judy Garland, her sobriety journey and more, and she names plenty of names. In the last chapter, she takes a jab at Lady Gaga, with whom she presented best picture at the Oscars in 2022. Minnelli alleges she was expecting to present while sitting in a director’s chair but was forced to use a wheelchair at the last minute.

Minnelli wrote that Gaga’s “seemingly gentle gesture” of holding her hand after Minnelli stumbled her words while presenting made her feel humiliated. “Stefani Germanotta, who created the fantasy of Lady Gaga, became someone I didn’t know on Oscar night,” she wrote.

Contributing: Clare Mulroy, USA TODAY