According to Deadline, the actor’s son Will posted, “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, one week before his 72nd birthday. He died peacefully, among family, of natural causes. The family requests privacy at this time.”
“I’m proud we did it,” Hurt told Yahoo! Movies in 2016 about Kiss of the Spider Woman. “It’s hard to describe how grateful an artist would be to have an experience like that.”
Hurt’s first major film role was in the science-fiction film Altered States. He later co-starred in ’80s classics such as Body Heat and The Big Chill.
He also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in A History Of Violence (2005). Some of his other movies included The Accidental Tourist (1988), Dark City (1998), Tuck Everlasting (2002) and Captain America: Civil War (2016). TV projects included Varian’s War (2001), Damages (2009) and Goliath (2016-21).
Marlee Matlin—Hurt’s Children of a Lesser God co-star who accused him of physical abuse in her memoir, I’ll Scream Later—told Entertainment Tonight, “We’ve lost a really great actor and working with him on set in Children of a Lesser God will always be something I remember very fondly. He taught me a great deal as an actor and he was one-of-a-kind,” according to Variety.
Matlin won the Oscar for best actress for that movie.
Hurt issued a statement following the publication of Matlin’s memoir in which he said, “My own recollection is that we both apologized and both did a great deal to heal our lives. Of course, I did and do apologize for any pain I caused.”