SANTA FE, New Mexico: Gene Hackman, the intense character actor who won two Oscars in a more than 60-year career, and his wife, pianist Betsy Arakawa, who were found dead at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico on Wednesday, appeared to have been deceased for "quite a while," a county sheriff said on Thursday (February 27).

The 95-year-old actor and Arakawa, 64, were found dead in separate rooms on Wednesday afternoon, the Santa Fe County sheriff's office said in a statement.

Sheriff Adan Mendoza said the bodies appeared to have been deceased for quite a while but declined to take a guess as to how long.

He said nothing had been ruled out yet.

"There was no obvious sign or indication of foul play. There was no immediate sign of foul play. I haven't ruled that out yet. This is an investigation so we're keeping everything on the table. I think the autopsy is going to tell us a lot and any evidence that we collect, but I haven't ruled any of that out yet," Mendoza said.

The sheriff's office applied for a search warrant on Wednesday (February 26) evening, telling the judge the deaths were "suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation."

The warrant application said the maintenance worker who discovered the bodies had found the home's front door ajar, although there were no signs of forced entry, and that there were no obvious signs of a gas leak or a carbon monoxide leak. Those possibilities were still under investigation. Detectives were awaiting autopsy reports and toxicology test results.

Sheriff's deputies found Hackman in the kitchen, and Arakawa and the dog in a bathroom, with scattered pills from an open prescription bottle on the bathroom counter. Both Hackman and Arakawa appeared to have suddenly fallen to the floor and neither showed signs of blunt force trauma, the affidavit said.

Hackman, a former Marine known for his raspy voice, appeared in more than 80 films, as well as on television and the stage during a lengthy career that started in the early 1960s.