I had one of the most memorable dinners of my working life with William Hurt.
The actor, whose death at 71 was announced Sunday, was in Austin in the late winter of 1996, filming the comedy “Michael” with writer-director Nora Ephron. As the film critic at the Austin American-Statesman, one of my duties was to make my way on to the set of the film and interview Ephron and her cast, which included John Travolta, Andie MacDowell and Bob Hoskins. But my requests kept getting rebuffed. Finally, a publicist confided that it was Hurt who opposed press visits during filming, which might distract the actor from the job at hand.
I understood, filing the episode away under “I tried.” Which made a subsequent invitation all the more surprising: Would I care to join Mr. Hurt for dinner? Production on “Michael” was wrapping up, he was about to leave town and — oh yes — his new movie, “Jane Eyre,” was about to be released in theaters. A date was set at the dining room of the Four Seasons Hotel, just across Town Lake from the Statesman’s newsroom.
I was happy to have a chance to interview Hurt. He had enjoyed a blazing run in the 1980s, making a terrific debut as an obsessed doctor in “Altered States” and becoming a swoon-worthy screen idol in the steamy “Body Heat” and zeitgeisty “Big Chill.” Subsequent turns in “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” “Children of a Lesser God” and “Broadcast News” earned him Oscar nominations (he won for “Spider Woman”). By the time I joined him at a window table at the Four Seasons, I was genuinely curious about an actor who, for millions of women (and not a few men) of my generation, had become the “thinking person’s” sex symbol, the kind of movie star whose charisma was a function of intelligence as much as sheer good looks.
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In all honesty, though, I was a bit preoccupied as well. The interview had been scheduled for mid-March, in the thick of Austin’s South by Southwest film and music festivals. I had had to leave a screening of John Sayles’s “Lone Star” early to be on time for Hurt, and I was hoping to be able to join friend later at La Zona Rosa to see the legendary Denton, Tex., band Brave Combo. With people to see and things to do, I figured I’d spend about an hour with Hurt, say my goodbyes and make it to the club in plenty of time for the show.
It didn’t work out that way. Given his resistance to a set visit, I expected Hurt to be press-shy, maybe even reticent. Instead he was voluble, curious, direct and disarmingly open. My cassette tape of the interview is lost to the sands of time and ravages of analog decay. But my chief memory of the evening is a lively, far-ranging conversation that served as a reminder that, before pursuing acting, Hurt had studied theology. He possessed an innate sense of etiquette that only seemed to fail once our food came, at which point he ceased talking and dropped his head down, as if literally contemplating his navel.
“I stop,” he said quietly.
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Uhm, hello? I looked around the room nervously. What was happening?
Share this articleShare“I stop,” he repeated, still assuming a disquietingly inert position. We sat in silence for at least a minute — which, as anyone who has sat in silence for a minute will know, felt like an hour. Once the ritual was complete, Hurt explained that he took these moments before every meal — an exercise that today would be called “mindfulness.”
With the exception of that brief interruption, he continued chattering, mostly about “Jane Eyre” and his interpretation of the moody, broody Mr. Rochester (opposite Charlotte Gainsbourg). I remember few specifics, except for his revelation that he habitually took on a “spirit animal” for every role he played. For Rochester in “Jane Eyre,” he said, it was a crow.
Stopping and spirit animals are just the kind of affectations that make “serious actors” such easy fodder for ridicule. Excesses in the name of “craft” and “commitment to the work” have been a part of showbiz lore for as long as performers have looked for their key light, underscoring the kind of preening vanity and pretentiousness that so often go hand in hand with talent. Who hasn’t heard the story of Laurence Olivier observing Dustin Hoffman’s Method-esque preparation for his role as the sleepless protagonist in “Marathon Man” (1976) and wryly suggesting, “Why don’t you just try acting?” More recently, it was “Succession’s” Jeremy Strong in the crosshairs, his actorly eccentricities indexed with almost sadistic glee in an uncharitable New Yorker profile, which referenced Strong’s idol, Daniel Day-Lewis — the O.G. when it comes to “the work,” having inhabited his roles so fully that he reportedly never broke character during filming.
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I’m ashamed to admit that Hurt’s spirit animals struck me the same way. As our dinner passed the 90-minute mark, I was growing impatient. Hurt’s disquisitions were beginning to feel less spontaneous than calculated and grandiose. It was all getting to be a bit much. Dessert? No thank you, just the check. By the time we got in our cars — with Hurt cheerfully honking and waving as he sped out of the parking garage — the “I stop” moment was already taking shape as yet another piquant anecdote from a career full of unforgettable encounters with the idiosyncratic and famous.
Over the ensuing years, though, my interpretation of Hurt’s spirit animals changed from a can-you-believe-this-guy eyeroll to muted respect. The more I’ve learned about cinema, and the singular challenges of acting first for the camera, then, by extension, the mass audience, the less cavalier I’ve become about what it takes to achieve the level of focus and transparency Hurt was able to channel over and over.
We’re conditioned to think of actors — especially the ones who become “movie stars” — as beautiful faces, objects of desire and vicarious glamour. But they’re also emotional instruments: the primary means of conveying the music and meaning of whatever they’re in, whether it’s a screwball comedy, three-hankie tear-jerker or something more subtle. When viewers laugh, cry, fall in love or simply become entranced by an actor of Hurt’s gifts, it’s because he’s been able to do whatever was necessary to strip away his psychological defenses, access his most vulnerable emotional interior, dredge up the multitudes he contains. We love actors, not when we catch them acting-with-a-capital-A, but when we watch them simply being alive. That can be scary stuff, and if it takes channeling your inner crow to do it, well, fly free, my friend.
Hurt was a serious actor. His a-bit-muchness was precisely what made it possible for him to be amusingly self-deprecating as a callow anchorman in “Broadcast News” or the sexy, dim-bulb patsy in “Body Heat.” What’s more, he rose to stardom at a time when Hollywood studios still made a place for actors of his caliber — not just as a way to elevate the latest superhero franchise, as Hurt did as Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross in the Avengers movies, but as leading players in mainstream movies.
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I look back at that 1996 dinner with a combination of amusement, regret and nostalgia. As gratifying as it is to contemplate the remarkable performances that made up Hurt’s career, it’s chastening to think of the wide range of films this consummate serious actor was allowed to be serious in. I still remember his final beep and wave with exasperated fondness. Now, on just about every level, I wish I’d made time for dessert.
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