The Oscar winner and four-time contender also appeared in films such as ‘The Big Chill,’ ‘Children of a Lesser God,’ ‘The Accidental Tourist,’ and ‘A History of Violence.’ He was also nominated for an Academy Award.
Hurt, the demanding Oscar winner who, with his roles in the 1980s masterpieces Body Heat, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Children of a Lesser God, and Broadcast News, established himself as a leading man in the industry like few others, has passed away. He was 71 years old.
Hurt died early Sunday morning at his home in Portland, Oregon, according to Will Hurt, one of his three kids, who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter on his behalf. He did not provide any information about the cause of death.
Hurt, who had previously worked on the stage, made his feature film debut as an obsessed psychopathologist who experiments with sensory deprivation and flotation tanks in the weird Paddy Chayefsky-scripted Altered States (1980), which was directed by Ken Russell.
Later, Lawrence Kasdan made his directorial debut with Body Heat. His character, a poor lawyer, becomes a boy toy for a rich, manipulative woman who wants to kill her husband. Christopher Reeve, a former classmate at the Juilliard School, had already turned down his part in the play.
Next, Hurt starred in The Big Chill (1983), which was also directed by Kasdan. He played a Vietnam War veteran who was emotionally damaged because of the war. The two would work together again in 1988’s The Accidental Tourist and 1990’s I Love You to Death.
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In 1985, Hurt won an Oscar for his performance as Luis Molina, a transvestite window dresser who was locked in a South American jail cell with a militant warrior (Raul Julia). The movie, Kiss of the Spider Woman, was an art house hit directed by Héctor Babenco.
“We had to talk about more than just gay rights,” Hurt said in 2015. “We had to talk about feminine and masculine relationships, courage, and what it means to speak truth to a power so much bigger than you are.” “We didn’t make any money while we were shooting, so there was no desire for extra money.” This was a great chance to do the right thing.
In 1986, Hurt was nominated for best actor again for his work as James Leeds, a teacher at an elementary school for the deaf. In Broadcast News, he played the anchorman Tom Grunick, who was in a love triangle with two other men.
As a sinister mob boss in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, Hurt was nominated for his fourth Academy Award (2005).
Hurt was known for being hard to work with.
When Kasdan was interviewed by a newspaper in 1989, he said that “everybody who does well at something is called difficult at some point.” “Bill is completely honest with everything he does.” He can’t do something that isn’t true. When your instincts are so strong in favour of what’s true, that’s a very powerful thing to have. In the case of an actor, that’s everything.
Most of the time, “he brings along a sense of the normal, a sense that this is just a person who happens to be in the place at the time,” Roger Ebert wrote about the actor in 1988. Altered States and Body Heat are two examples of movies where John Hurt goes over the top. When he does, it looks like he started out quieter than Mickey Rourke or Robert De Niro, and so he seems to have gone further than they did. Only Jack Nicholson can make it look like he doesn’t even know who he is.
This is not the only Marvel movie in which he played Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. He also played the military man in the movies The Incredible Hulk (2008) and Captain America Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Black Widow (2019). (2021).
When William McChord Hurt was born on March 20, 1950, he was living in the capital city of Washington, DC. His father, Alfred, worked for the State Department’s Agency for International Development, and he and the boy lived in Guam and Hawaii when he was a young boy.
After his parents broke up when he was about 6, his mother, Claire, took him and his two brothers to New York with her. At Time Inc., she got a job, and in 1960, she married Henry Luce III, a son of the founder of the publishing company.
First, Hurt did a play at the private Middlesex School in Concord, Mass. His first job was as a theatre student in England with his then-wife, actress Mary Beth Hurt. He then went to Juilliard in New York, where he studied acting for three years with Robin Williams, Mandy Patinkin, and Reeve.
A year later, he left to play Edmund in an Oregon Shakespeare Festival production.
Hurt returned to New York and starred in plays such as Hamlet, Childe Byron, Richard II, and My Life. In 1977, he appeared in a two-part Kojak episode.
Hurt won best actor at Cannes for Kiss of the Spider Woman, which made $17 million, a remarkable sum for an independent at the time. (The drama was originally cast with Burt Lancaster as Luis.)
The Oscar win was “very isolating,” Hurt told the LA Times in 1994. “I thought, ‘God, what do I do now?’” How will I enter a room and have other actors trust me?’
Nominated for Best Actor three years in a row were Hurt Paul Muni Spencer Tracy Gregory Peck Marlon Brando Richard Burton Al Pacino Jack Nicholson and Russell Crowe.
The iceberg is built through acting, Hurt says. To play the tip, you must first build the unseen. Only a little portion of the iceberg is ever seen. Especially in American cinema, where the iceberg is the focus.
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A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), the distraught father of Emile Hirsch’s wanderer in Into the Wild (2007), and the president of the United States in Vantage Point (2008). (2008).
Among his other credits are Eyewitness (1981), Smoke (1995), Dark City (1998), A Time of Destiny (1988), The Doctor (1991), Second Best (1994), Jane Eyre (1996), The Big Brass Ring (1999), The Village (2004), Syriana (2005), Robin Hood (2010), The Host (2013) and Winter’s Tale (2014).
