William Hurt, the acclaimed actor best known for his Oscar-winning role in 1985’s Kiss of the Spider Woman and his work in Big Chill and Body Heat, died Sunday of natural causes. He was 71 years old. Hurt’s death was confirmed to Variety by his friend Jerry Byrne.
Hurt has been nominated for four Oscars in his long career, receiving two nominations for Best Actor in Broadcast News and Children of a Lesser God, and a supporting role in less than 10 minutes of screen time in A History of Violence. He was one of the most famous performers of the 1980s, becoming something of an intellectual sex symbol and a reluctant, if lucrative, movie star.Hurt later moved into character roles in the 1990s and successfully alternated between big-screen and television roles, such as his Emmy Award nomination as an informant in Damage.
More recently, Hurt has become well known to the younger generation of moviegoers for his role as the no-nonsense General Thaddeus Ross in the 2008 film The Incredible Hulk. He later reprized the role in Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and Black Widow.
Hurt was born March 20, 1950 in Washington, DC. His mother, Claire Isabelle, worked for Time Inc., and his father, Alfred Hurt (1910–1996), was a professional bureaucrat who worked for the US Agency for International Development and the State Department. His parents separated and his mother remarried Henry Luce III, son of Time magazine publisher Henry Luce.
Raised in relative privilege, Hurt attended Tufts University where he studied divinity before moving to Juilliard to study acting. After appearing on stage, Hurt landed a starring role in Altered States, playing a troubled scientist in Ken Russell’s offbeat film, a notable entry in the body horror genre. But a year later, Hurt reached a new level of fame when he starred opposite Kathleen Turner in Body Heat, a noir-packed film that updated the look of betrayal and double-crossing seen in films like The Big Sleep and Double Indemnity. with invigorating sexuality. This made both performers, caught fire on the screen, big stars. Hurt then went on to play another leading role in Gorky Park and was part of the Big Chill ensemble, a group-of-friends reunion drama that became a touchstone for the baby boomer generation.
All this preceded one of the most stunning reigns a movie star has ever enjoyed. From 1986 to 1988, Hurt was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times in a row, winning for his performance as a gay window dresser in Kiss of the Spider Woman.
The commercial and critical success of these films propelled Hurt to the top of the charts, but he did not seem to like the celebrity.
“It’s not right that my privacy is being invaded to this extent,” Hurt told the New York Times in 1989. “I am a very private person and I have the right to be. I never said that since I was an actor, you can have my privacy, you can steal my soul. You can not.
Perhaps it was this aversion to notoriety that led Hurt to star in several major films during his career, when the actor missed out on filming opportunities in films such as Jurassic Park and Misery.
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