William Hurt, star of stage and screen who won an Oscar in his mid-30s, has died, according to Deadline. “It is with great sadness that the Hurt family mourns the passing of William Hurt, beloved father and Oscar winning actor, on March 13, 2022, one week before his 72nd birthday,” his son Will posted in a statement. “He died peacefully, among family, of natural causes. The family requests privacy at this time.”
A Juilliard graduate, Hurt began his career on the stage, winning an Obie Award for one of his first performances. He crossed over to movies, making his screen debut in 1980’s Altered States as an obsessive psychopathologist whose experiments with isolation tanks and psychoactive drugs takes surprising turns.
He became a star thanks to two films with writer-director Lawrence Kasdan: Body Heat, a sweaty, sexy neo-noir that paired him with Kathleen Turner (in her debut), and the Boomer classic The Big Chill. By 1985 he had an Academy Award for Kiss of the Spider Woman, playing a gay man imprisoned by Brazil’s military dictatorship. Other nominations soon followed, for the drama Children of a Lesser God and the very funny, very smart Broadcast News. In Body Heat and Broadcast News, the emphatically intelligent Hurt proved himself adept at playing dumb himbos, in the former used by someone much slyer than him.
Hurt could be an arresting leading man or a scene-stealing supporting player. Among his many credits were incredible turns in I Love You to Death (paired with Keanu Reeves in what proved an underrated and unexpected comedy duo), Until the End of the World, Smoke, Dark City, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Mr. Brooks, Into the Wild, and more. He also did occasional TV work, playing Duke Leto Atreides in the 2000 Sci Fi Channel take on Dune, Damages, Too Big to Fail, and an episode of Mythic Quest.
Like many in Hollywood, Hurt wound up working for the MCU. He was an early adopter, appearing in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk as General Thaddeus Rose, a role he repeated in Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and, one of his last films, Black Widow.
Hurt received his last Oscar nomination for his one-scene turn in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. He needs only a few minutes to work his magic, as you can see below. RIP to a king.
(Via Deadline)
