American actor William Hurt died on Sunday March 13 at the age of 71. He won the Best Actor Oscar for Kiss of the Spider Woman.
Another very sad news for the world of cinema. This Sunday, March 13, the American actor William Hurt died at the age of 71. It was his son Will, who announced his death in a press release. “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, a week before his 72nd birthday”he informs adding that“he died peacefully, in family, of natural causes”.
He began his career by going on stage in the late 1970s. In the cinema, he played eccentric and unusual characters ranging from the Russian policeman in Gorky Park (1983), to the rich and distant husband in Alice by Woody Allen (1990). But his career experienced a real turning point in the 80s thanks to the films Friends first (1984) and children of silence (1987). But it’s his interpretation of a gay prisoner in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) which put him on the list of the best actors of the moment. A performance that won over critics and won him the best actor award at Cannes and the Oscar for best actor the same year. Since this recognition by his community, he had continued filming. Lately, he had appeared in many feature films of the franchise Marvel and in the series Damages and Goliath.
An actor far from the glitz of Hollywood
If William Hurt obtained the statuette so desired by many of his colleagues, this prize never made him happy. In an interview for the Telegram in 2004 he said: “The Oscar isolated me. It was the opposite of what I wanted. I didn’t want a sign on me saying ‘He won the Oscar, this is for him’. I wanted to be an actor, so it disturbed me a lot. And sometimes I still am.” And this Oscar disturbed him, it was the same with Hollywood life. “I’m not comfortable with all this. I’m not comfortable walking the red carpet in a tuxedo, and seeing all the women with their boobs up and all the men dressed as penguins.”
In 2018, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer that was already advanced to an incurable stage. A disease which was not specified by his son as being the cause of his death. Married many times, he leaves behind two sons and two daughters, one of whom was born of his romance with the French actress Sandrine Bonnaire, whom he met in 1992 on the set of Plague.