by Nathaniel R

Hurt as I remember him.

I read with total shock yesterday the news that William Hurt had passed away of cancer. There's something about growing up watching famous actors that ties your own ideas about time to their legacy, however loosely. When I heard the news I thought "Noooo he was so young!" before realizing that he was just shy of his 72nd birthday and not the handsome entirely fictional thin-haired 40something actor that I realized I pictured him as, a slightly aged version of his smoldering but callow young beauty, perhaps informed by the wearier sinister bald character actor of his later years. But William Hurt was actually 71 when cancer took him. So why had William Hurt become frozen in time for me? The answer lies not just in my own cinephilia but in the very distinct phases of his career...