Oscar-winning actor William Hurt, whose career ranged from famous 1980s dramas to Marvel Universe productions, has died at age of 71.
Hurts his Will, says in a statement that Hurt died on Sunday of Natural causes. Hurt died peacefully, among family his son noted. The Hollywood Reporter said he died at son home in Portland, Oregon. Deadline first Hurt reported death. The injury has already been diagnosed with prostate cancer that had spread to the bone in 2018.
In a long career, Hurt was four times appointed for an Academy Award, winning for 1985 “Kiss of spider woman. After his breakthrough in in the 1980s, Paddy Chayefsky scripted “Altered States” as a psychopathologist studying schizophrenia and experimenting with sensory deprivation, Hurt quickly established himself as a mainstay of the 80s.
In Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 scorching neo-noir “Body Heat”, Hurt starred opposite Kathleen Turner as a convinced advocate of murder. In “The Big Chill” from 1983, again with Kasdan, Hurt played the dark Vietnam War veteran Nick Carlton, one of a group of college friends who to assemble for their friend’s funeral.
Injured, including father work for the State Department, was born in Washington, DC, and has traveled extensively in son childhood while attending boarding school in Massachusetts. His parents divorced when he was young. When Hurt was 10 years old, son mother married Henry Luce III, son of the founder of Time magazine. Hurt studied theater at Julliard and first has emerged on the scene new-yorker with the Circle Repertory company. After “The Big Chill”, he returned to the stage for star on Broadway in “Hurly Burly” by David Rabe for which he was named for a Tony.
Shortly after came “Kiss of the spider woman, who won Hurt the best Oscar for actor for his performance as a homosexual prisoner in a repressive South American dictatorship.
“I’m very proud to be an actor,” Hurt said, accepting the award.
In 1986, “Children of a lesser God”, it was son co-star Marlee Matlin, who took the Oscar for son performance as a caretaker in a school for the deaf. Hurt played a speech teacher. For Hurt and Matlin, their romance was off-screen, too – but it wasn’t Hurt’s first experience with his private life finding notoriety.
Hurt was first married to actor Mary Beth Hurt from 1971 to 1982. While married he began a relationship with Sandra Jennings, whose pregnancy with their son precipitated Hurt’s divorce from Mary Beth Hurt. A high-profile court case ensued six years later in that Jennings claimed she had been Hurt common-wife-in-law under South Carolina law and is therefore entitled to a share of his earnings. A New York court ruled in Hurt’s favor, but the actor continued to have a strained relationship with notoriety.
“Playing is a very intimate activity and private thing,” Hurt told The New York Times. in 1983. “The art of playing requires as much solitude as art of writing. Yeah, you work up against other people but you have to learn a trade, technique. This is work. There’s this weird thing that my game is supposed to be this clamor for attention to my person as if I needed so much love or so much attention that I give up my right to be private the person.”
In her 2009 memoir, Matlin detailed the physical and emotional abuse during their relationship. Back then of his post, Hurt issued an apology, saying, “I remember we both apologized and we both made a great deal with heal our lives.”
In those years Hurt also struggle with drug and alcohol abuse, and attended rehabilitation clinics. He also developed a reputation for not always being an easy collaborator. The New Yorker called him “notoriously temperamental”. In 1989 Hurt married Heidi Henderson, who he met in rehabilitation. They had two children together. Hurt also had a daughter with French actress and filmmaker Sandrine Bonnaire, whom he met while directing the direct-to-video adaptation of Albert Camus in 1992 “The Plague”.
Among Hurt’s greatest performances was James L. Brooks’ 1987 comedy “Broadcast News,” as a sleek but light-hearted newscaster. who symbolized the nascent fusion of entertainment and journalism.
Hurtstar’s “Broadcast News” castmate Albert Brooks was among the many who responded to Hurt’s passing on Sunday. “So sad to hear that news“, wrote Brooks on Twitter. “working with him on “Broadcast News” was amazing. He will be greatly missed. »
After his scorching 80s runHurt fell more and more out of to favor with filmmakers in the 90s, and some felt it was because of his reputation. Hurt, however, continued to defend son approach, telling the Los Angeles Times in 1994 that “I give more by solving the truth only by bowing to easy expectations and hopes.
“If a director tells me to make think or feel the public a certain thing, I’m instantly in revolt,” Hurt said. “I’m not here to do anyone otherwise think or feel something specific. I accepted something the whole piece says. Beyond that, it is my only obligation to solve the truth of the room. I don’t owe anyone anything – including the director.”
Nonetheless, Hurt never slowed downstack up credits in the 90s and 2000s – “Alice” by Woody Allen, “Smoke” by Wayne Wong, “Michael” by Nora Ephron, “Jane Eyre” by Franco Zeffirelli.
Hurt, always a smart screen presence, gradually transitioned into a character actor. He received his fourth Oscar nomination for his small but powerful role in David Cronenberg’s 2005 thriller “A History of Violence.”
Hurt continued to work constantly in years leading up at son death: 10 episodes of “Damage”; a string of Marvel movies, including “Avengers: Endgame” and “Black Widow,” as military officer Thaddeus Ross; 14 episodes on Amazon’s Goliath.
Often Hurt suggested that son legendary run in the 80s were the outlier of what defined him as an actor.
‘Success is isolation,’ he told the Telegraph in 2004. “Granted, the Oscar was isolating. In some ways, it was contrary to what I was aiming for. I didn’t want be isolated. I do not have want some big target on my chest saying, ‘He’s an Oscar-winner he’s the one to be.’ I wanted being an actor, so I was very confused about that. Sometimes I’m still confused about it.
Oscar-winning actor William Hurt, whose career ranged from famous 1980s dramas to Marvel Universe productions, has died at age of 71.
Hurts his Will, says in a statement that Hurt died on Sunday of Natural causes. Hurt died peacefully, among family his son noted. The Hollywood Reporter said he died at son home in Portland, Oregon. Deadline first Hurt reported death. The injury has already been diagnosed with prostate cancer that had spread to the bone in 2018.
In a long career, Hurt was four times appointed for an Academy Award, winning for 1985 “Kiss of spider woman. After his breakthrough in in the 1980s, Paddy Chayefsky scripted “Altered States” as a psychopathologist studying schizophrenia and experimenting with sensory deprivation, Hurt quickly established himself as a mainstay of the 80s.
In Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 scorching neo-noir “Body Heat”, Hurt starred opposite Kathleen Turner as a convinced advocate of murder. In “The Big Chill” from 1983, again with Kasdan, Hurt played the dark Vietnam War veteran Nick Carlton, one of a group of college friends who to assemble for their friend’s funeral.
Injured, including father work for the State Department, was born in Washington, DC, and has traveled extensively in son childhood while attending boarding school in Massachusetts. His parents divorced when he was young. When Hurt was 10 years old, son mother married Henry Luce III, son of the founder of Time magazine. Hurt studied theater at Julliard and first has emerged on the scene new-yorker with the Circle Repertory company. After “The Big Chill”, he returned to the stage for star on Broadway in “Hurly Burly” by David Rabe for which he was named for a Tony.
Shortly after came “Kiss of the spider woman, who won Hurt the best Oscar for actor for his performance as a homosexual prisoner in a repressive South American dictatorship.
“I’m very proud to be an actor,” Hurt said, accepting the award.
In 1986, “Children of a lesser God”, it was son co-star Marlee Matlin, who took the Oscar for son performance as a caretaker in a school for the deaf. Hurt played a speech teacher. For Hurt and Matlin, their romance was off-screen, too – but it wasn’t Hurt’s first experience with his private life finding notoriety.
Hurt was first married to actor Mary Beth Hurt from 1971 to 1982. While married he began a relationship with Sandra Jennings, whose pregnancy with their son precipitated Hurt’s divorce from Mary Beth Hurt. A high-profile court case ensued six years later in that Jennings claimed she had been Hurt common-wife-in-law under South Carolina law and is therefore entitled to a share of his earnings. A New York court ruled in Hurt’s favor, but the actor continued to have a strained relationship with notoriety.
“Playing is a very intimate activity and private thing,” Hurt told The New York Times. in 1983. “The art of playing requires as much solitude as art of writing. Yeah, you work up against other people but you have to learn a trade, technique. This is work. There’s this weird thing that my game is supposed to be this clamor for attention to my person as if I needed so much love or so much attention that I give up my right to be private the person.”
In her 2009 memoir, Matlin detailed the physical and emotional abuse during their relationship. Back then of his post, Hurt issued an apology, saying, “I remember we both apologized and we both made a great deal with heal our lives.”
In those years Hurt also struggle with drug and alcohol abuse, and attended rehabilitation clinics. He also developed a reputation for not always being an easy collaborator. The New Yorker called him “notoriously temperamental”. In 1989 Hurt married Heidi Henderson, who he met in rehabilitation. They had two children together. Hurt also had a daughter with French actress and filmmaker Sandrine Bonnaire, whom he met while directing the direct-to-video adaptation of Albert Camus in 1992 “The Plague”.
Among Hurt’s greatest performances was James L. Brooks’ 1987 comedy “Broadcast News,” as a sleek but light-hearted newscaster. who symbolized the nascent fusion of entertainment and journalism.
Hurtstar’s “Broadcast News” castmate Albert Brooks was among the many who responded to Hurt’s passing on Sunday. “So sad to hear that news“, wrote Brooks on Twitter. “working with him on “Broadcast News” was amazing. He will be greatly missed. »
After his scorching 80s runHurt fell more and more out of to favor with filmmakers in the 90s, and some felt it was because of his reputation. Hurt, however, continued to defend son approach, telling the Los Angeles Times in 1994 that “I give more by solving the truth only by bowing to easy expectations and hopes.
“If a director tells me to make think or feel the public a certain thing, I’m instantly in revolt,” Hurt said. “I’m not here to do anyone otherwise think or feel something specific. I accepted something the whole piece says. Beyond that, it is my only obligation to solve the truth of the room. I don’t owe anyone anything – including the director.”
Nonetheless, Hurt never slowed downstack up credits in the 90s and 2000s – “Alice” by Woody Allen, “Smoke” by Wayne Wong, “Michael” by Nora Ephron, “Jane Eyre” by Franco Zeffirelli.
Hurt, always a smart screen presence, gradually transitioned into a character actor. He received his fourth Oscar nomination for his small but powerful role in David Cronenberg’s 2005 thriller “A History of Violence.”
Hurt continued to work constantly in years leading up at son death: 10 episodes of “Damage”; a string of Marvel movies, including “Avengers: Endgame” and “Black Widow,” as military officer Thaddeus Ross; 14 episodes on Amazon’s Goliath.
Often Hurt suggested that son legendary run in the 80s were the outlier of what defined him as an actor.
‘Success is isolation,’ he told the Telegraph in 2004. “Granted, the Oscar was isolating. In some ways, it was contrary to what I was aiming for. I didn’t want be isolated. I do not have want some big target on my chest saying, ‘He’s an Oscar-winner he’s the one to be.’ I wanted being an actor, so I was very confused about that. Sometimes I’m still confused about it.