HHollywood in the 1980s was energized and heightened by the sly beauty, masculinity and sexuality of William Hurt, who netted three consecutive Best Actor Oscar nominations mid-decade: for Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1986, Children of a Lesser God in 1987 and Broadcast News in 1988. After transforming from a stylish leading man to a character actor, he went on to earn a fourth Best Supporting Actor nomination, for A History of Violence by David Cronenberg.

Hurt won for the first of them, in which he played a gay man imprisoned for sex offenses in an oppressive South American state, sharing a cell with a gruff straight political prisoner and escaping into flowery melodramatic fantasies. He was a curvy, yet athletic screen presence as the exotic Luis, in his robes and turban, exquisitely handsome but with absolutely nothing dainty or Elvish about him.

Hurt’s imposing features and his subtly mischievous smile still had something of the Roman Emperor. Perhaps if his appearance had been a little bland or more conventional, he could have had the career of Robert Redford. Perhaps it had something to do with his receding hairline, noticeable even at the very beginning of his career, in Ken Russell’s Altered States in 1980, where he played a psychologist who delved into the rabbit hole of the mind in realms of altered and heightened consciousness. experience.

Hurt was superb in darker roles, where his beauty coexisted with something venal, cynical and conceited. He was superb in Lawrence Kasdan’s neo-noir riff on Double Indemnity, Body Heat in 1981 in which he has a fatal desire for a married woman played by Kathleen Turner; she had some sour chemistry with Hurt’s dim-witted lawyer, to go along with the chemistry they both had with the camera.

The films he later made were hugely important in establishing his star presence: Michael Apted’s 1983 thriller Gorky Park, scripted by Dennis Potter, featured Hurt as a Russian policeman who must deal with of a horrific case of murder. In 1986, he played James Leeds, the sincerely well-meaning teacher of hearing-impaired children in Children of a Lesser God, who became fascinated by Sarah, a deaf young woman working at his school, played by hard-of-hearing performer Marlee Martin, with whom Hurt must have had a relationship. Martin’s character rejects the idea of ​​vocalizing, instead of signing, an idea that Leeds are trying to force on him. (This debate may have influenced the recent movie Sound of Metal.) It was a perfectly solid performance from Hurt, even if the movie was a bit sonic, flat and unbearable for all the character is supposed to be conceited and redeemed. by his relationship with Sarah.

But his interpretative masterpiece was to arrive a year later, with James L Brooks’ glorious media satire, Broadcast News, starring alongside two superb actors also giving the performance of a lifetime: Holly Hunter as of Jane, the driven and emotionally tortured TV news producer and her best friend and colleague Aaron, a talented but insecure and prickly journalist played by Albert Brooks. Hurt plays Tom, a handsome and narcissistic former sports anchor who, much to Aaron’s horrified resentment, is promoted to head anchor. And to add to her woes, Jane (whose clever beta-male Aaron is pathetically and unrequitedly in love with) is clearly very attracted to the superficial and sexy Tom, whose career is progressing while Aaron’s is faltering.

Hurt is superb as a guy who has an instinctive understanding of how to work with the camera, read the clues, invest everything with a specious air of charm and authority. For Aaron, he resembles Satan himself. Tom begins the film with a great deal of humility and self-doubt, but gradually becomes entirely content with his own massive prestige and even coaches Aaron in how to read the news when Aaron has to fill in for a night out – a job he’s into. a humiliating failure. – but Aaron catches Tom faking a tearful response in one of his interviews. Tom is essentially a comedic creation but Hurt makes him complicated, vulnerable and human insofar as he is clearly smug and objectionable.

The contemptuous mobster he played in Cronenberg’s A History of Violence amplified Hurt’s talent for a certain kind of masculine vanity. He was a loathsome assassin who lives a life of absurd smugness in a slightly bizarre pseudo-baronial stately home that he considers fit for a killer of his rank and when he confronts the small-town hero of Viggo Mortensen , he has that puzzled, questioning look of disgust and disdain that he has done so well. In his later roles, he could play old statesman characters with an opaque, forbidding countenance (even in Marvel movies), but it was in serio-comedy roles where he really shone. Hurt was so sexy, funny and imposing.