On a thunderously rainy Los
Angeles afternoon, one can do worse than spend an hour on the phone with actor
William Hurt. In conversation, the Oscar winner reveals himself to be much like
the screen characters who first made him famous: brainy, passionate and a damn
good talker.
Hurt, 59, lives in eastern Oregon, not far
from where his mother was "born and buried." Though he generally
steers clear of Hollywood, Hurt did pop up recently at the Golden Globes, where
he was nominated for his work on last season's Damages (reuniting him
with Big Chill co-star Glenn Close). On this day, he seems eager to bang
the drum for The Yellow Handkerchief, the quietly moving film from
director Udayan Prasad (My Son the Fanatic) that offers Hurt his fullest
film role in years (it opens on February 26).
Hurt is clearly proud of the film, written
by Erin Dignam, and photographed in a post-Katrina Louisiana by the great Chris
Menges (The Mission). Hurt plays Brett Hanson, an oil rigger who's just
been released from Louisiana's notoriously harsh Angola Prison. Anxious to get
to the coast, where he hopes to find his wife (Maria Bello) waiting for him,
Hanson hitches a ride with two wayward young people (Kristen Stewart and Eddie
Redmayne), themselves strangers to each other, who are in need of a guiding
hand. All three have too much on their minds, but as they get lost, get cranky,
and generally become a traveling unit, they begin talking to each other — in a
series of mini monologues — about where they've been and where they might still
go.
"We wanted to make a revolutionary
film," Hurt declares, "in that it's not about violence. But the main
distributors all said the film needed violence to be sellable." The actor
sighs. "It's sad that you can't earn the right to tell a story that's
authentic and hopeful. I'll always stand by a peace-lovin' film."
It's hard not to compare an actor who says
"peace-lovin' " and
"revolutionary" with such ease and conviction to the idealistic,
hallucinogen-lovin' psych professor he played in his debut film, Altered
States, directed by Ken Russell (Women in Love) and written by the
legendary Paddy Chayefsky (Network).
"You were such an exhilarating mix of
intelligence, sensuality and kinetic energy in that movie," I tell Hurt.
"You were almost jumping out of your skin."
"I was jumping out of my
skin!" Hurt exclaims with a laugh, and then pauses, as if conjuring up the
film. "I was jumping out of my skin because Paddy Chayefsky was
articulating ideas that were so far ahead of their time. Molecular biology and
quantum physics, the sources of altruism, the notion of love over truth — I
couldn't stop shaking when I read that script."
How the then–29-year-old actor, who was
happily working in New York theater at the time, came to land that
life-altering role is a mini movie unto itself. "I was in an elevator, on
my way to audition for some theater thing," Hurt recalls, "when this
guy asks, 'Aren't you an actor? We heard about you. We might want to see you
for our film.' "
Hurt's response? "I don't make movies and I don't want to make
movies."
The man in the elevator was film producer
Howard Gottfried (The Hospital, Network), and when he told Hurt
that the script was by Chayefsky, Hurt couldn't wait to read it — though he
swore that he still wouldn't want to be in the movie.
"I sat down in a Cuban coffee shop up
on 78th and Amsterdam," Hurt says, "and I couldn't stop reading it
and I couldn't stop weeping, and for a long time, I couldn't stand up."
Meetings followed, at which Hurt worked to convince Gottfried, Chayefsky, and
Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde), who was then planning to direct, that
they had to make the movie but with another actor. "I knew myself,"
Hurt says. "I was too thin-skinned for the personal exposure actors get
from doing a film." Finally, Gottfried (or maybe it was Chayefsky?) said,
"We'll do it if you will."
And so they did, and soon Hurt was riding
a decadelong streak of films — Body Heat, The Big Chill, Kiss
of the Spider Woman, Children of a Lesser God, Broadcast News
and The Accidental Tourist — that were not only successful, but also
really, really good. At first, Hurt tended to play men who were full to
bursting with feeling and theory — he always seemed to be bending his long,
lanky frame a bit forward, as if to be heard more clearly. By decade's end,
portraying the adverse of those eager youths, Hurt held himself more rigidly,
as if his characters had learned that it's best to keep their distance from the
world.
For Hurt, each of those films worked
because he never forgot the lessons of Chayefsky and Penn: Trust the words on
the page, and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. "I don't know why people don't
understand the formula," Hurt laments, "but that's the formula. We
had two weeks of rehearsal on The Yellow Handkerchief and I think the
power of the film lies in what we learned in those two weeks."
When I wonder aloud about Hurt's slow and
occasionally bumpy transition from leading-man roles to what are
euphemistically called "character roles" (such as that part in Damages),
Hurt makes it clear that he's stopped worrying about such things, if he ever
did.
"I don't see any point in setting out
to be a movie star. It's a subsidiary condition, a sideline. Stardom is not a
fact of my existence as an actor. What enthralls me is where the character is
coming from, not what they look like when they get there. What they look like
is taken care of as you go back upriver and locate their origins. Taking that
journey is the joy of it for me. When I'm working like that, I'm really
happy." (Chuck Wilson)