William Hurt, star of 'Broadcast News,' 'Body Heat,' dies

William Hurt, the Oscar-winning actor of 'Broadcast News,' 'Body Heat' and 'The Big Chill,' has died. He was 71.

Hurt's son, Will, said in a statement that Hurt died Sunday of natural causes. Hurt died peacefully, among family, his son said. The Hollywood Reporter said he died at his home in Portland, Oregon. Deadline first reported Hurt's death. Hurt was previously diagnosed with prostate cancer that had spread to the bone in 2018.

In a long-running career, Hurt was four times nominated for an Academy Award, winning for 1985's "Kiss of the Spider Woman." After his breakthrough in 1980's Paddy Chayefsky-scripted "Altered States" as a psychopathologist studying schizophrenia and experimenting with sensory deprivation, Hurt quickly emerged as a mainstay of the '80s.

In Lawrence Kasdan's 1981 steamy neo noir "Body Heat," Hurt starred alongside Kathleen Turner as a lawyer coaxed into murder. In 1983's "The Big Chill," again with Kasdan, Hurt played the brooding Vietnam War veteran Nick Carlton, one of a group of college pals who gather for their friend's funeral.

Hurt, whose father worked for the State Department, was born in Washington D.C. and travelled widely as a child while attending boarding school in Massachusetts. His parents divorced when he was young. When Hurt was 10, his mother married Henry Luce III, son of the Time magazine founder. Hurt studied acting at Julliard and first emerged on the New York stage with the Circle Repertory Company. After "The Big Chill," he returned to the stage to star on Broadway in David Rabe's "Hurlyburly," for which he was nominated for a Tony.