In May 2018, it was announced that William Hurt had terminal prostate cancer that had already metastasized to the bones. He died from complications of the disease at his home in Portland, Oregon on March 13, 2022, at the age of 71.
Mr. Hurt’s son, Will, said Mr. Hurt died Sunday of natural causes, and that Mr. Hurt died peacefully, among family.
“Acting is a very intimate and private thing,” Mr. Hurt told the New York Times in 1983. “The art of acting requires as much solitude as the art of writing. Yeah, you bump up against other people, but you have to learn a craft, technique. It’s work. There’s this odd thing that my acting is assumed to be this clamor for attention to my person, as if I needed so much love or so much attention that I would give up my right to be a private person.”
Hurt, always had an intelligent screen presence, gradually morphed into a character actor. He received his fourth Oscar nomination for his small but potent role in David Cronenberg’s 2005 thriller A History of Violence.
Hurt continued to work constantly in the years leading up to his death: 10 episodes of Damages; a string of Marvel films, including Avengers: Endgame and Black Widow, as the military officer Thaddeus Ross; 14 episodes of Amazon’s Goliath.
Often, Hurt suggested that his fabled run in the ’80s was the outlier to what defined him as an actor.
“Success is isolating,” he told The Telegraph in 2004. “Certainly the Oscar was isolating. In some ways, it was antithetical to what I was aiming at. I didn’t want to be isolated. I didn’t want some big target on my chest saying: ‘He’s an Oscar-winner, he’s the one to be.’ I wanted to be an actor, so I was very confused about it. Sometimes I’m still confused about it.”
About William Hurt
- Full name was William McChord Hurt
- Born on March 20, 1950
- Died on March 13, 2022
- He was the son of Claire Isabel, who worked for Time Inc., and Alfred McChord Hurt (1910–1996), who worked for the United States Agency for International Development and State Department
- Studied at the Juilliard School
- Began acting on stage in the 1970s
- Hurt’s film debut was in Ken Russell’s science-fiction feature Altered States, released in 1980
- Received a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year
- In 1981 he played a leading role in the neo-noir Body Heat, with Kathleen Turner
- Hurt garnered three consecutive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), Children of a Lesser God (1986), and Broadcast News (1987)
- William Hurt remained an active stage actor throughout the 1980s, appearing in Off-Broadway productions including Henry V, Fifth of July, Richard II and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Hurt received his first Tony Award nomination in 1985 for the Broadway production of Hurlyburly
- After playing character roles in the following decade, Hurt earned his fourth Academy Award nomination for his supporting performance in David Cronenberg’s crime thriller A History of Violence (2005)
- His later career films roles include turns in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), The Village (2004), Syriana (2005), The Good Shepherd (2006), Mr. Brooks (2007), Into the Wild (2007), Robin Hood (2010)
- Hurt was part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, in which he portrayed Thaddeus Ross
- He was Vice-President of the Dramatics Club and had the lead role in several school plays
- His High School Yearbook predicted, “You might even see him on Broadway”
- Hurt attended Tufts University and studied Theology
- William Hurt was a private pilot and owner of a Beechcraft Bonanza
- He was fluent in French
- He maintained a home outside Paris
