William Hurt, who became Hollywood’s hot performer for his stellar performance as a hapless lawyer in “Body Heat” in 1981 and within a few years won the prestigious Oscar for the 1985 film “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” in which he won an Oscar the protagonist depicts a gay man living in a Brazilian prison cell with a rebel, who died at his home in Portland, Ore., on Sunday. He was 71 years old. The son, Alexander Hurt, said the cause was prostate cancer.
Mr. Hurt, tall, white and with a balanced approach that provided brain quality to his characters, was a leading figure in some of the most popular films of the 1980’s, including “The Big Chill” (1983), “Children of the Little God” (1986), “Broadcast News” (1987) and “The Accidental Tourist” (1988). “Children of the Little God” and “Broadcasting News” have won him a major Oscar-nominated actor, which means he has made a huge difference to being nominated for that award for three consecutive years.
In the years that followed, Mr. Hurt shifted from leading man to supporting roles; was nominated for another Academy Award, as the best supporting actor, in “A History of Violence” (2005). Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times in 1985 about the “brilliant success” of Mr. Hurt and her star, Raul Julia, in “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
“Mr. Hurt won a well-deserved best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for a performance that is crafty at first, carefully nurtured and finally stirring in profound, unanticipated ways,” she wrote. “What starts out as a campy, facetious catalog of Hollywood trivia becomes an extraordinarily moving film about manhood, heroism and love.”
Before he broke into films, Mr. Hurt was an in-demand stage actor, working frequently at Circle Repertory in New York, among other theaters. In 1985 he was nominated for a Tony Award for best featured actor in a play for his work in “Hurlyburly,” a David Rabe play directed by Mike Nichols with a loaded cast that included Cynthia Nixon, Sigourney Weaver, Harvey Keitel and Jerry Stiller.
“Once again, Mr. Hurt establishes himself as an instantly affable screen star, an actor who combines some of Dustin Hoffman’s best qualities with some of Jeff Bridges’s,” Ms. Maslin wrote in reviewing that film for The Times. “He seems thoughtful, wry and funny, yet he has a comfortable physical presence, too, and a friendliness that’s uncomplicatedly disarming.”
Later in his career he played major and minor roles. In an interview with The Times of 2009, he explained: “I do not have to be a star, physically. My biggest contribution is my mind. It’s not my face. ”
In recent years he has worked extensively on television, including the FX series “Damages” and the British sci-fi drama “Humans.” He had appeared in the 2013 television film “The Challenger Disaster,” which in a 2015 interview prompted The Guardian to ask him if he was interested in space travel.
If his acting drew raves, Mr. Hurt’s personal life was rocky. He had a relationship with his co-star in “Children of a Lesser God,” Marlee Matlin, which she later described as abusive. A long-term relationship with Sandra Jennings, a dancer, landed in court in 1989, with Ms. Jennings contending, unsuccessfully, that they were in effect married. His marriages to Mary Beth Hurt and Heidi Henderson ended in divorce.
