Actor William Hurt, star of 'Broadcast News' and 'Body Heat,' dies at 71
NEW YORK — William Hurt, whose laconic seductiveness and tone- assured slyness as an actor made him one of the 1980s' foremost leading men in pictures similar as Broadcast News, Body Heat and The Big Chill, has failed. He was 71.
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| William Hurt |
Hurt's son, Will, said in a statement that Hurt failed Sunday of natural causes. Hurt failed peacefully, among family, his son said. The Hollywood Journalist said he failed at his home in Portland, Oregon. Deadline first reported Hurt's death. Hurt was preliminarily diagnosed with prostate cancer that had spread to the bone in 2018.
In a long- handling career, Hurt was four times nominated for an Academy Award, winning for 1985's Kiss of the Spider Woman. After his advance in 1980's Paddy Chayefsky-scripted Altered States as a psychopathologist studying schizophrenia and experimenting with sensitive privation, Hurt snappily surfaced as a dependence of the'80s.
In Lawrence Kasdan's 1981 amorous neo noir Body Heat, Hurt starred alongside Kathleen Turner as a counsel blandished into murder. In 1983's The Big Chill, again with Kasdan, Hurt played the miscarrying Vietnam War stager Nick Carlton, one of a group of council musketeers who gather for their friend's burial.
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. Hurt, whose father worked for the State Department, was born in Washington,D.C., and traveled extensively as a child while attending boarding academy in Massachusetts. His parents disassociated when he was youthful. When Hurt was 10, his mama married Henry Luce III, son of the Time magazine author. Hurt studied acting at Julliard and first surfaced on the New York stage with the Circle Repertory Company. After The Big Chill, he returned to the stage to star on Broadway in David Rabe's Hurlyburly, for which he was nominated for a Tony.
William Hurt and Heidi Henderson arrive at the Golden Globe Awards in 2012.
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Shortly after came Kiss of the Spider Woman, which won Hurt the stylish actor Oscar for his performance as a gay internee in a cathartic South American absolutism.
"I'm veritably proud to be an actor,"Hurt said, accepting the award.
In 1986's Children of a Lower God, it was hisco-star, Marlee Matlin, who took the Oscar for her performance as a custodian at a academy for the deaf. Hurt played a speech schoolteacher. For Hurt and Matlin, their love was out- screen, as well — but it was not Hurt's first experience with his private life chancing notoriety.
Hurt was first wedded to actor Mary Beth Hurt ( also a Big Chillco-star) from 1971 to 1982. While he was married, he began a relationship with Sandra Jennings, whose gestation with their son rained Hurt's divorce from Mary Beth Hurt. A high- profile court case replaced six times latterly in which Jennings claimed she had been Hurt's common- law woman under South Carolina law and therefore entitled to a share of his earnings. A New York court ruled in Hurt's favor, but the actor continued to have a simulated relationship with fame.
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" Amusement is a veritably intimate and private thing,"Hurt told The New York Times in 1983."The art of acting requires as important solitariness as the art of jotting. Yeah, you impinge up against other people, but you have to learn a craft, fashion. It's work. There is this odd thing that my amusement is assumed to be this clamor for attention to my person, as if I demanded so important love or so important attention that I would give up my right to be a private person."
In her 2009 bio, Matlin detailed physical and emotional abuse during their relationship. At the time of its publishing, Hurt issued an reason saying"My own recollection is that we both apologized and both did a great deal to heal our lives."
In those times, Hurt also plodded with medicine and alcohol abuse, and attended recuperation conventions. He also developed a character for not always being an easy collaborator. The New Yorker called him"notoriously temperamental."In 1989, Hurt married Heidi Henderson, who he met at recovery. They had two children together. Hurt also had a son with French actress and filmmaker Sandrine Bonnaire, whom he met while making the straight-to- videotape 1992 Albert Camus adaption The Plague.
Among Hurt's topmost performances was JamesL. Brooks'1987 comedy Broadcast News, as a slick but featherlight anchorman who represented the arising emulsion of entertainment and journalism.
Albert Brooks, Hurt's Broadcast Newsco-star, was among the numerous who responded to Hurt's passing Sunday." So sad to hear this news," wrote Brooks on Twitter." Working with him on'Broadcast News' was amazing. He'll be greatly missed."
After his ardent'80s run, Hurt fell decreasingly out of favor with filmmakers in the'90s, and some reasoned that it was because of his character. Hurt, still, continued to defend his approach, telling the Los Angeles Times in 1994 that"I give more by working the verity than by pandering to prospects and facile expedients."
Still, I'm presently in rebellion,"Hurt said,"If a director tells me to make the followership suppose or feel a certain thing."I am not there to make anyone differently suppose or feel anything specific. I've agreed to commodity the whole piece says. Beyond that it's my only obligation to break the verity of the piece. I do not owe anybody anything — including the director."
Nonetheless, Hurt noway braked down, piling up credits in the'90s and'00s — Woody Allen's Alice, Wayne Wong's Bank, Nora Ephron's Michael, Franco Zeffirelli's Jane Eyre.
Hurt, always a intelligent screen presence, gradationally morphed into a character actor. He entered his fourth Oscar nomination for his small but potent part in David Cronenberg's 2005 suspenser A History of Violence.
Hurt continued to work constantly in the times leading up to his death 10 occurrences of Damages; a string of Marvel flicks, including Punishers Endgame and Black Widow, as the military officer Thaddeus Ross; 14 occurrences on Amazon's Goliath.
Frequently, Hurt suggested that his legendary run in the'80s was more the outlier to what defined him as an actor.
"Success is segregating,"he told The Telegraph in 2004." Clearly the Oscar was segregating. In some ways, it was contrary to what I was aiming at. I did not want to be insulated. I did not want some big target on my casket saying'He is an Oscar- winner, he is the one to be.'I wanted to be an actor, so I was veritably confused about it. Occasionally I am still confused about it."