William Hurt was nominated for an Academy Award on four separate occasions, winning for 1985′s Kiss of the Spider Woman.
His laconic charm and self-assured subtlety made him one of the 1980s’ leading men in movies like Broadcast News, Body Heat, and The Big Chill. He has passed away.” He was seventy-one years old.
A statement from Hurt’s surviving son Will said that the actor died on Sunday from natural causes. According to his son, Hurt died peacefully in the company of relatives. According to the Hollywood Reporter, he died in his Portland, Oregon, home. – Hurt’s death was initially reported by Deadline. Prostate cancer that had already spread to Hurt’s bones was discovered in 2018.
Hurt was nominated for an Academy Award four times throughout the course of his lengthy career, with his only victory coming in 1985 for Kiss of the Spider Woman. As a psychopathologist investigating schizophrenia and experimenting with sensory deprivation in the 1980’s Paddy Chayefsky-scripted the Altered States, Hurt rapidly became a staple of the 1980s.
The sultry neo-noir Body Heat, starring Hurt and Kathleen Turner, was directed by Lawrence Kasdan in 1981. Nick Carlton, a Vietnam War veteran, is one of a group of college mates who meet for their friend’s funeral in 1983’s The Big Chill, directed by Kasdan.
Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Massachusetts by a State Department employee father, Hurt had a worldly upbringing. When he was a kid, his parents were divorced. Hurt’s mother married Henry Luce III, the Time magazine founder’s son, when he was ten years old. Julliard trained Hurt, and the Circle Repertory Company was where he initially made his mark on the New York stage. The next year, he appeared on Broadway in Hurlyburly, a play by David Rabe that he was nominated for a Tony Award for starring in.
Hurt’s portrayal of a homosexual prisoner in a brutal South American dictatorship earned him the best actor Oscar for Kiss of the Spider Woman, which came out shortly after.
Hurt expressed his gratitude for the honour by saying, “I am really pleased to be an actor.”
Marlee Matlin, his co-star in the 1986 film Children of a Lesser God, won an Academy Award for her role as a caretaker at a school for the deaf. Hurt portrayed a speech therapist in a film. Hurt and Matlin’s relationship was also off-screen, but it wasn’t Hurt’s first brush with his private life becoming a media sensation.
From 1971 until 1982, Hurt was married to actress Mary Beth Hurt. Hurt’s divorce from Mary Beth Hurt was hastened by his affair with Sandra Jennings, whom he met while married and who later gave birth to their son. It wasn’t until six years later that Jennings sued Hurt, claiming she was his common-law wife under South Carolina law and so entitled to a portion of his wages. Despite a favourable decision from a New York court in Hurt’s favour, the actor’s relationship with fame remained fraught.
In 1983, Hurt told the New York Times, “Acting is a very private and personal activity.” Writing and performing both need a great deal of isolation. Although you’ll come into contact with others, you’ll also have to develop a skill or technique. It’s a lot of hard work. My acting is thought to be a cry for attention to my person as if I needed so much affection or so much attention that I would give up my right to be a private person,” he said.
Their relationship was characterised by both physical and emotional violence, according to Matlin’s book from 2009. “My personal memory is that we both apologised and both did a great lot to mend our lives,” Hurt said at the time of the book’s publication.
Meanwhile, Hurt was battling drug and alcohol addiction and had to go to rehab centres at this time period. He also had a reputation for being difficult to work with. The New Yorker referred to him as “notoriously erratic.” During his time in recovery, Hurt met Heidi Henderson, whom he married in 1989. During their marriage, they had two sons and a daughter. While filming The Plague in 1992, Hurt met French actress and director Sandrine Bonnaire, who gave birth to his daughter.
One of Hurt’s most memorable roles was as a suave but lightweight anchorman in James L. Brooks’ 1987 comedy Broadcast News. He epitomised the developing marriage of entertainment and journalism.
One of Hurt’s co-stars, Broadcast News co-star Albert Brooks, was among the numerous people who comment to Hurt’s death on Sunday. Brooks tweeted, “So sorry to hear this news.” “It was an honour to work with him on ‘Broadcast News.'” It is with tremendous sadness that we announce his passing.
Some said that Hurt’s reputation was to blame for his decline in popularity with the film industry in the ’90s after his ’80s heyday. The Los Angeles Times quoted Hurt in 1994 as saying, “I contribute more by fixing the reality than by appealing to expectations and simplistic dreams.” Hurt stuck with his approach.
“I am instantly in rebellion if a filmmaker orders me to make the audience believe or feel a specific way,” Hurt stated. The purpose of my presence is not to influence anybody else’s thoughts or feelings.” It seems that the author and I have reached an agreement on something. Beyond that, I am solely responsible for uncovering the piece’s veracity. Nobody, even the filmmaker, owes me anything.
In spite of this, Hurt continued to work nonstop throughout the 1990s and 2000s, starring in films such as Woody Allen’s Alice, Wayne Wong’s Smoke, Nora Ephron’s Michael, and Franco Zeffirelli’s Jane Eyre, among many others.
As the years went by, Hurt became more and more of a character actor. For his work in David Cronenberg’s 2005 thriller A History of Violence, he got his fourth Oscar nomination.
Ten episodes of Damages, several Marvel flicks (Avengers: Endgame and Black Widow), and 14 episodes of Amazon’s Goliath were among Hurt’s many projects in the years preceding his death.
Often, Hurt claimed that his famed ’80s run was the exception rather than the rule.
In 2004, he told the Telegraph, “Success is a lonely thing.” “Of course, the Oscars were alone. As a result, in some respects, it went against everything I was trying to do. I didn’t want to be the only one who didn’t know anybody. As an Oscar-winning actor, I didn’t want to be labelled as “the one to be” because of my status. Because I want to be an actress, I was perplexed. When it comes to it, I’m still a little unsure.
