Hollywood in the 1980s was energised and enhanced by the sly beauty, masculinity and sexuality of William Hurt, who managed three best actor Oscar nominations in a row in the middle of the decade: for Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1986, Children of a Lesser God in 1987 and Broadcast News in 1988. Having morphed from sleek leading man to character actor, he later got a fourth nomination for best supporting actor, for David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence.
Hurt won for the first of these, in which he played a gay man imprisoned for sexual offences in an oppressive South American state, sharing a cell with a gruffly straight political prisoner, and escaping into florid melodramatic fantasies. He was a sinuous and yet athletic screen presence as the exotic Luis, in his gowns and turban, exquisitely beautiful but with absolutely nothing delicate or elfin about him.
