R.I.P. to the first adult actor I knew

It probably goes without saying that I've been watching movies starring adults since I started watching movies back in the 1970s. But no actor personified an adult like William Hurt, who died of natural causes at age 71 on Sunday.

How does one "personify" an adult? 

I suppose what I really mean is that Hurt kind of ushered me into the concept of adult movies, those that were not intended for me but whose merits I could begin to understand.

There were a number of these "gateway movies" that I saw all or part of in the mid- to late-1980s, when I was just beginning my teenage years. And Hurt seemed to be in all of them.

The one I think of most is Broadcast News, one of the earliest movies I saw that I knew was not for me, but I loved anyway. It's a title I've been meaning to watch again for ages, and now that Hurt has died, it should finally find its way onto the schedule. I think part of my affection for this was the crush I had on Holly Hunter, but I remember specifically being taken with Hurt's performance.

The Accidental Tourist was another, though unfortunately, my rewatch of that one didn't go so well when I saw it again back in 2010. 

Then there were films I saw parts of, if not all of, like The Big Chill, Children of a Lesser God and Kiss of the Spider Woman, though I did eventually properly watch all of them. 

So unlike most actors who only appear in adult-oriented films -- I don't think Hurt ever appeared in something primarily intended for children -- I've been watching his movies for going on 35 years now. 

You could argue that Hurt's recent run in the MCU -- a run that was expected to continue, I imagine -- could be described as that sort of shift. But Hurt didn't get involved until other Oscar-winning actors (Hurt won his Oscar for Kiss of the Spider Woman*) had already been guinea pigs. (I will leave this paragraph even though I was subsequently reminded that his MCU character, Thaddeus Ross, first appeared in The Incredible Hulk -- in other words, the second MCU movie.)

I think the thing that drew me to Hurt was his dignity. He was like a British actor in American skin. He had a kind of proper quality to him that some might call stiff, but Hurt was never stiff. He was prim and proper and almost always played an intelligent character, but he had that mischievous little smile that belied inner dimensions to which he also treated us.

It certainly came as a surprise to learn that he had passed. He never struck me as someone in his 70s, though he was indeed a week short of his 72nd birthday. I also contested the idea that "natural causes" could take someone as young as 71. 

But having watched Hurt on screen for half of his own life, I suppose he was, in the end, an old man, if you define 70 as that line of demarcation. An old man who gave us many wonderful moments on screen over those 35 years since I first discovered this beguiling adult who was not Mark Hamill or Harrison Ford or Christopher Reeve or Roger Moore or Michael J. Fox.

I'll miss him. 

Correction: I wrote that he had won his Oscar for Children of a Lesser God when I originally posted this, due to a mental error caused by the similar title structures.