European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - February 13, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse Intensity of being above William Hurt with Marlee mat in in a scene from children of a lesser right Hurt plays a successful news correspondent in broadcast byh Alwinson Washington Post w Illiam Hurt is pointing to a smallish Lack object in a stationery store window. Look Here do you see that he says with excitement. Sitting High up on a shelf is one of those fashionable pocket computer diaries. See that Button the red one finally the Button comes into focus. It says would t you just love to know what happens when you push that Button William Hurt wants to push All the buttons to know All the secrets. The reputation that precedes the actor whose new film is the accidental tourist is that he is a serious Man. And if by serious you mean Earnest if by serious you mean concentrated if by serious you mean passionately unapologetic ally sincere then Hurt May be one of the most serious Guys around. It s Normal in a crowded restaurant like this one on Manhattan s upper West Side for your eyes to Dart away with the movement of passersby. But Hurt s never stray. His gaze is fixed on yours focused in and under the circumstances you Don t dare look away for fear that it might signal a lapse in interest even a violation of Trust. After five minutes you forget about your club Sandwich. Twentieth Century Fox As fellow prisoners William Hurt right and Raul Julia explore the complexities of an enforced relationship in the kiss of the spider Island alive Hurt does t know the meaning of Small talk. He s a Marathon rapper a metaphysical explorer. You can almost see him sitting in the Bathtub before lathering up pausing to contemplate the essential nature of soap. Albert Brooks who played opposite him in broadcast news puts it this Way Bill Hurt is to serious what i am to there Are genuine insights in Hurt s Meta philosophizing but you have to fight through an Avalanche of words to get to them. He s smart. But he also has a daunting capacity for grandiloquent Bull singing for rambling puzzling soliloquies and obfuscating digressions. Hurt is forever in the process of defining himself. The most mundane inquiry will fire off cosmic associations the Way it often does for dormitory mystics when it s late at night and the Hookah s smoking. Words Are Hurt s Bridge to other people and his Protection from them. Intellectual nation is his Deflector shield. But words have also been his enemies. Few performers have been less Well served by their own Public statements. Once in 1984, when describing his relationship with dancer Sandra Jennings and their infant son Alex he said they Are the vessel in which my love and he s said even More appalling things. Just Check the press clips. For this reason the Media have found him easy to deride. For interviewers the Standard reaction has been to titter behind the hand when Hurt launches into one of his rhetorical flights. Still though Gale Force winds of pretension blow through his broadcasts he stays on the air hoping to make a connection. I have this relentless need to express myself he says wincing slightly. Yet one of his favorite lines belongs to Molina the homosexual prisoner he played in the kiss of the spider woman. " i never explain my movies it just ruins the emotion i love saying that line. There is a Point to explaining what i do but at some Point you just have to do it. The work is the Best that i have to offer. That s what i want to be eloquent Hurt was born in 1950 in Washington but because of his father s position in the state department with the Agency for International development his earliest years were split Between Guam and Hawaii. When he was about 6, his parents marriage faltered and he moved with his Mother and two Brothers to the Yorktown Section of Manhattan. For the next phase of his life he lived at a Jumble of addresses a year and a half with his father in Pakistan Back to new York then Summers in the Sudan Somaliland and Greece. In 1960, Hurt s Mother married Henry Luce Iii the son of the founder of time inc. All of a sudden the Public school in new York was replaced by the Middlesex school in Concord mass., the four room walk up in Yorktown by a 22-room duplex on Madison Avenue. That was a big switcheroo for me Hurt remembers and i think my head went around one too Many times there. By the time i switched from Public to private school i was 12 and a loner and i did t have too Many Hurt s Only Relief from his adolescent travails was singing in the school chorus. At the time it was about the Only thing i could do. I was a Lousy athlete because until i was 16,1 was Short and Chubby. Then i grew six inches in one year and i was tall and jangly so i could t find a eventually an observant teacher at Middlesex who had noticed Hurt s ardor in the chorus suggested that he try out for an upcoming play. He did and was Given a smallish role. I played the Guy who comes on in the Crucible and says the lieutenant governor has arrived that was my first line. And apparently in a dress rehearsal with a full audience i came on said the line then looked out at my director in the audience and said did i do that right " from the Start acting for Hurt has always been an Arena of personal questing. When i started to act i was desperately trying to find something. Thafel could respect about myself he confesses. That was very important to me. I did t feel i was Worth very still when Hurt finished at Middlesex and enrolled at Tufts it was As a theology major not a drama student. There were a lot of things going on there Hurt explains taking a sip from his Cranberry juice. In some ways i was boxed. I had a legitimate spontaneous interest in theology in trying to come to a Faith. But i also had another motive to attract attention especially the attention of a Stepfather who was very eventually after devoting most of his time to secular rather than divine pursuits Hurt left Tufts to spend his senior year As a theater student in England with his then wife actress Mary Beth Hurt. Afterwards he graduated with honors then following his return Home he was accepted at Juilliard where he studied for three years before abruptly leaving and Riding Cross country on a motorcycle to accept a role As Edmund in the Oregon Shakespeare festival s 1975 production of Long Day s journey into night a play that he says i used to carry around with there is a Point to explaining what i do but at some Point you just have to do it. The work is the Best that i have to offer. That s what i want to be eloquent the adventure paid off in what Hurt has called the Best Edmund there Ever for the first time he says he Felt that he knew what he was doing As an actor. I had been working at it for about 12 years Hurt recalls the excitement building in his voice and i can remember exactly when i started working Well. I did it Well and i knew i had done it Well and for the first time i knew exactly How i had done it. I knew How i built it i knew what went into it i knew the whole thing following this breakthrough Hurt left Oregon living in his car with his dog for two months travelling around to just about every theater in the country trying to get work. I auditioned for everybody he remembers and the general consensus was that i feeling demoralized Hurt returned to new York where he began to attract attention in a number of off Broadway roles before finally Landing the Lead in the Circle repertory company s 1977 production of Corinne Jacker s my life. The performance won him an obie and the following year he claimed leading roles in three of that company s productions most notably in Lanford Wilson s the fifth of july. Asked about Hurt s work for him at Circle rep Marshall Mason who directed the actor in seven plays including Hamlet Childe Byron and Richard ii blurts out he s one of the greatest actors in the world and i love him it was Mason to whom Hurt went for advice in 1979 when he was offered the role of the recklessly adventurous scientist in altered states. Bill went into the movies very hesitantly Mason recalls. At the time he says the project featured a script by Paddy Chayefsky and was to be directed by Arthur Penn. With this lineup Mason encouraged Hurt to take the plunge. But by the time the film was completed Chayefsky had removed his name and Penn had been replaced by Ken Russell. In his first love scene Hurt stares into the glowing coils of a space Heater and his co Star Blair Brown asks him what Are you thinking about god. Jesus. Crucifixion he answers bathed in the Orange Light of the Heater. As Mason puts it he could hardly have started out still the actor s work was striking. What Mason remembers most is All the hype about Hurt being the new Robert Redford something he says that his Friend could t have been less interested in. It was terrible to watch Bill suffer through his first experiences in Hollywood Mason says. The process of making movies very often turns people into commodities and for someone like Bill that can be very painful. All too often this has been his even so Hurt s style As an actor seems tailor made for the movies. Hurt works in miniature he s a pacemaker and his performances Are delicately detailed fragile embedded in silence. As Macon in the accidental tourist Hurt seems to strip nearly everything from the surface of his performance and in doing so creates a kind of droll minimalist comedy playing Macon he says i Felt that i was in there working with very tiny in the Likely event that Hurt receives a Best actor nomination this year for the accidental tourist it will be his fourth consecutive nomination an accomplishment that Only Marlon Brando can Lay claim to. In addition to spider woman and children of a lesser god Hurt was nominated last year for broadcast news the Prospect however barely registers for him. I m a person who can Tell you that i be been to the top of some supposedly desirable Mountain and it can mean nothing he says. It does t bring you Hurt seems to realize that his statement has a melodramatic ring to it. I Don t want to characterize my life As a tragedy he says sternly. It s not a tragedy though a lot of tragic things have happened. But a lot of great things were going on now that he s Learned the difference Between acting and acting out the Hurt melodrama is Over he says. He rang in the new year he says eating ice Cream with a buddy. It was pretty sane he says. We ended the evening by 12 30." though Hurt has said that he would like to take a year off he has a Small part in a comedy. He is also trying to decide which of three one acts he will use to make his debut As a director at Circle repertory. Finally after thinking about this for 10 years i m going to do and he is thinking a lot again about playing Hamlet though he says the physical dexterity required to do that play is astounding. I m not sure i could pull it off. I burned the Candle at both ends for a when it s suggested that he has come out the other end of a Long dark Tunnel he says who knows the focus of today he says is today. This said a final thought comes to mind. I love the line from the play everyman the actor says. This is great the play everyman was written by Anonymous. The preface instead of the habit of the time which was to make this Long winded circuitous incestuous use of language was a single line. Death thou Earnest when i had thee least in mind i Don t want to have death in my mind. I want to live. Death is nothing. I hate Page 14 the stars and stripes monday february 13,1989 the stars and stripes Page 15
