The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (203 page)

Hurt is universally known, and admired. He does three or four projects a year, and very few of them are in the mainstream—he is as adventurous as the best strain of British acting, yet he is safe casting in a blockbuster like
Harry Potter. Six Characters in Search of an Author
(92, Bill Bryden);
L’Oeil Qui Ment
(92, Raul Ruiz);
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
(93, Gus Van Sant);
Monolith
(93, John Eyres);
Great Moments in Aviation
(93, Beeban Kidron);
Second Best
(94, Chris Menges); an odious Montrose in
Rob Roy
(95, Michael Caton-Jones);
Dead Man
(95, Jim Jarmusch);
Wild Bill
(95, Walter Hill)—very like his
Heaven’s Gate
part;
Two Nudes Bathing
(95, John Boorman);
Saigon Baby
(95, David Attwood);
Prisoners in Time
(95, Stephen Walker).

He was excellent as Giles De’Ath in
Love and Death on Long Island
(97, Richard Kwietniowski);
Contact
(97, Robert Zemeckis);
Bandyta
(97, Maciej Dejczer);
Tender Loving Care
(97, David Wheeler);
The Commissioner
(98, George Sluizer);
The Climb
(98, Bob Swaim);
Night Train
(98, John Lynch);
All the Little Animals
(98, Jeremy Thomas);
You’re Dead
(98, Andy Hurst); on TV,
Krapp’s Last Tape
(00, Atom Egoyan);
Lost Souls
(00, Janusz Kaminski); as Porfiry in
Crime and Punishment
(00, Golan Menahem);
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
(01, John Madden); as Mr. Ollivander in
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
(01, Chris Columbus).

He was in
Tabloid
(01, David Blair);
Miranda
(02, Marc Munden);
Bait
(02, Nicholas Renton); as the casino boss in
Owning Mahowny
(03, Kwietniowski);
Dogville
(03, Lars von Trier);
Hellboy
(04, Guillermo del Toro); as the lead in
The Alan Clark Diaries
(04, Jon Jones) for TV.

After
The Proposition
(05, John Hillcoat), he did
Shooting Dogs
(05, Caton-Jones); the narrator for
Manderlay
(05, von Trier);
The Skeleton Key
(05, Iain Softley);
V for Vendetta
(06, James McTeigue);
The Oxford Murders
(08, Alex de la Iglesia);
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
(08, Steven Spielberg);
Hellboy II
(08, del Toro);
Lesson 21
(08, Alessandro Baricco);
Outlander
(09, Howard McCain);
The Limits of
Control
(09, Jarmusch); and doing Crisp again in
An Englishman in New York
(09, Richard Laxton).

William Hurt
, b. Washington, D.C., 1950
In the days when William Hurt was being hailed as the Leading Man of the Eighties, he was sometimes typed as a Wasp. It was fair up to a point. His father had been in the State Department, and the boy had lived in Africa and the Pacific on tours of duty. When the parents divorced, young Hurt had a stepfather, Henry Luce III. The boy was sent to prep school and to Tufts. He was tall, fair, and handsome. Still, there was more of the wasp than the Wasp. And while he was evidently smart—he graduated with honors—he was overly inclined to lecture others, and to rise on clouds of obscurity. He was not liked by the press, and he has never won the love of the public. He was not far away from being cast as a villain.

He strove with a problematic venture and the background of special effects in
Altered States
(80, Ken Russell). He was an oddball, voyeuristic janitor in
Eyewitness
(81, Peter Yates), not within arm’s length of wholesome. And he was brilliant as the lazy lawyer, Ned Racine, in
Body Heat
(81, Lawrence Kasdan), taken in by his own superiority.

This was his moment. He was narcissistic in
The Big Chill
(83, Kasdan), and already one felt that films were exploiting his overweening self-regard. He went grim as the Russian cop in
Gorky Park
(83, Michael Apted); he rose to the bravura opportunity of
Kiss of the Spider Woman
(85, Hector Babenco), in which the material gave him a welcome sense of contempt for himself. The role was so exotic, Hurt won the Oscar.

Next he helped Marlee Matlin to a similarly sentimental award in
Children of a Lesser God
(86, Randa Haines). But Hurt was making less impact, and in
Broadcast News
(87, James Brooks), as the anchorman light as a feather, he was an object of mockery. It was a clever performance, but Hurt was being shown up.
A Time of Destiny
(88, Gregory Nava), in which he played an odious villain, was a disaster; while in
The Accidental Tourist
(88, Kasdan) he seemed depressed and out of reach. He was a blind, proud husband in
Alice
(90, Woody Allen); in
I Love You to Death
(90, Kasdan); and then, in
The Doctor
(91, Haines), he had a great chance as a trapped misanthropist, only for the movie to lob batting-practice happy endings at his character and his problems.
The Doctor
was as bad as any film of tough ideas in panicked times, and Hurt was stranded, an actor no longer credible as a leading or heroic figure. He appeared as a wanderer in
Until the End of the World
(91, Wim Wenders), once more leaning away from the mainstream and toward allegedly higher things. He was in
The Plague
(93, Luis Penzo) and
Mr. Wonderful
(93, Anthony Minghella).

In a way, his own status was more intriguing than most of his parts, but he didn’t seem a jot less prickly: a shy Welsh postmaster in
Second Best
(94, Chris Menges); very strange as the enforcer in
Trial by Jury
(94, Heywood Gould);
Smoke
(95, Wayne Wang);
Secrets Shared with a Stranger
(95, Georges Bardawil);
A Couch in New York
(96, Chantal Akerman); a haunted Mr. Rochester in
Jane Eyre
(96, Franco Zeffirelli);
Michael
(96, Nora Ephron);
Loved
(97, Erin Dignam);
Dark City
(98, Alex Projas); bizarre in
Lost in Space
(98, Stephen Hopkins);
The Proposition
(98, Lesli Linka Glatter); very good as the writer-husband in
One True Thing
(98, Carl Franklin).

He had the thankless lead in
The Big Brass Ring
(99, George Hickenlooper); and then delivered one of his best performances in
Sunshine
(99, István Szabó). But he was soon restored to oddity:
Do Not Disturb
(99, Dick Maas);
The 4
^th
Floor
(99, Josh Klausner);
The Simian Line
(00, Linda Yellen); in the TV
Dune
(00, John Harrison); very good as Varian Fry in
Varian’s War
(00, Lionel Chetwynd);
The Contaminated Man
(00, Anthony Hickox);
The Flamingo Rising
(01, Martha Coolidge);
A.I
. (01, Steven Spielberg);
Rare Birds
(01, Sturla Gunnarsson).

He was in
Changing Lanes
(02, Roger Michell);
Au Plus Près du Paradis
(02, Tonie Marshall);
Tuck Everlasting
(02, Jay Russell); on TV as
Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story
(02, Lawrence Schiller);
The Tulse Luper Suitcases: The Moab Story
(03, Peter Greenaway);
The Blue Butterfly
(04, Léa Pool);
Frankenstein
(04, Kevin Connor);
The Village
(04, M. Night Shyamalan).

It was plain that Hurt was often working at levels far beneath his best—and sneering because of it. But then, as he passed fifty, he found himself again:
The King
(05, James Marsh), a neglected picture; and then Richie in
A History of Violence
(05, David Cronenberg)—world-weary, whiny, wicked, and getting a supporting actor nomination—a sublime performance. He did
Neverwas
(05, Joshua Michael Stern); a jaded spook in
Syriana
(05, Stephen Gaghan); a corrupt CIA chief in
The Good Shepherd
(06, Robert De Niro). He acted in and produced
The Legend of Sasquatch
(06, Thomas Callicoat) and then he was Kevin Costner’s nasty alter ego in the absurd
Mr. Brooks
(07, Bruce A. Evans). After
Beautiful Ohio
(07, Chad Lowe), he did
Noise
(07, Henry Bean);
Into the Wild
(07, Sean Penn);
Vantage Point
(08, Pete Travis);
The Incredible Hulk
(08, Louis Leterrier); the TV series
Damages; Endgame
(09, Travis);
The Countess
(09, Julie Delpy);
Robin Hood
(10, Ridley Scott).

Anjelica Huston
, b. Los Angeles, 1951
1996:
Bastard out of Carolina
(TV). 1999:
Agnes Browne
.

In the early nineties, we looked upon Anjelica Huston as one of America’s acting treasures—she was bold visually and emotionally; she seemed passionate yet truthful; and she has an air of pedigree in our minds. Yet in 1980, it was all she could do to find a decent part, let alone develop a career—and she was already thirty. In other words, there has been a sentimental view that sees her as having been nurtured by her father, John Huston, and by her former longtime lover, Jack Nicholson. Show business families are stranger than that. I do not mean to say the two men deliberately blocked her (though John had been discouraging). Perhaps their example simply intimidated her. Though admired for her great strength now, Anjelica Huston may have felt overwhelmed, an appendage. Whatever, she needed to move out of their shadow to become herself.

She was the daughter of Huston’s third wife, Ricki Soma, a model. As such, she was raised largely in Galway, Ireland, and in London—a child who viewed her father as a romantic traveler who came home now and then with exotic gifts, and sometimes with other women.

She had a small part in her father’s
Sinful Davey
(69), and the female lead in his medieval romance,
A Walk with Love and Death
(69). The latter was an unhappy experience that propelled Anjelica into modeling. She had a tiny role in
Hamlet
(70, Tony Richardson), and then a moment of mistaken identity in
The Last Tycoon
(76, Elia Kazan), so haunting that one marvels at the movie persisting with Ingrid Boulting as its lead. She had another moment in
Swashbuckler
(76, James Goldstone) and was seen briefly with Nicholson as the animal trainer in
The Postman Always Rings Twice
(81, Bob Rafelson). She was without a line as an asylum inmate, barely detectable, in
Frances
(82, Graeme Clifford).
The Ice Pirates
(84, Stewart Raffill) was a bigger role, but it was as Mae Rose in
Prizzi’s Honor
(85, John Huston) that she seized attention. Her scenes brought the ponderous film to taut life and won her a supporting actress Oscar—if only it had been a film about Mae Rose.

In
Gardens of Stone
(87, Francis Coppola), she was a decent pal to pained men. She did all she could in
The Dead
(87, Huston), but that complex story was far beyond the film’s attempt. She was an aviatrix in
A Handful of Dust
(88, Charles Sturridge), and she appeared in
Mr. North
(88, Danny Huston, her half-brother).

But in
Crimes and Misdemeanors
(89, Woody Allen), we could see a character actress emerging—rather plain, grating, unafraid of looking like a reject. She was better still in
Enemies, A Love Story
(89, Paul Mazursky). Still, she is not easily cast. Her looks tend easily such things as
The Witches
(90, Nicolas Roeg) and
The Addams Family
(91, Barry Sonnenfeld), neither of which made adequate demands on her.

The Grifters
(90, Stephen Frears), though, led her into a bleak careerist who might think of killing her child. The look that the actress found was startling, and her toughness was a little too serious for the film. But just because the movie flinched a little, we can see how hard it may be for Anjelica Huston to persist with her most dangerous feelings. We should recall just how dark and fatalistic her father could be.

Like several others, she has found valuable opportunities in television: in
Lonesome Dove
(89, Simon Wincer) and
Family Pictures
(93, Philip Saville). She had a good supporting role in
Manhattan Murder Mystery
(93, Allen); a small part in
And the Band Played On
(93, Roger Spottiswoode); and Morticia again, alas, in
Addams Family Values
(93, Sonnenfeld).

In recent years, she has turned to directing—once harshly, once rather sentimentally. But there’s no reason why she shouldn’t yet find herself, and it’s clear that she has other projects in mind, especially Irish ones. As an actress, her fortunes have been mixed, and really there hasn’t been enough to sustain the talent seen in
Prizzi’s Honor
and
The Grifters
. There’s been
Buffalo Girls
(95, Rod Hardy);
The Perez Family
(95, Mira Nair);
The Crossing Guard
(95, Sean Penn);
Buffalo ’66
(98, Vincent Gallo);
Phoenix
(98, Danny Cannon);
Ever After
(98, Andy Tennant); Mrs. Assingham in
The Golden Bowl
(00, James Ivory);
Time of Our Lives
(00, Mary Agnes Donoghue);
The Mists of Avalon
(01, Ulrich Edel);
The Man from Elysian Fields
(01, George Hickenlooper);
The Royal Tenenbaums
(01, Wes Anderson);
Blood Work
(02, Clint Eastwood);
Iron Jawed Angels
(03, Katja von Garnier);
Daddy Day Care
(03, Steve Carr);
Living and Breathing
(04, Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe);
The Life Aquatic
(04, Anderson).