I used to dislike him for the same reasons, but his performance was awesome and perfectly appropriate as the traitorous real-life bad guy in Master Spy (great flick - the bad reviews are way off)
Hurt seems stiff because he often plays characters who are emotionally repressed. If you think he seems stiff, then it’s because of his skill as an actor. That’s the entire point of the character; if he emoted, then the movie would fail.
Lost in Space is hardly fair; Hurt knew he was in a dog and was phoning it in.
If an actor makes the same damn choices for every damn character, than either he’s: a) a character actor (“Goon”, “Grandfather”, “Wacky Neighbor”) or b) hopelessly typecast or c) hopelessly boring and playing it safe or d) not as good of an actor as he thinks he is.
When that movie was coming out I read a story about it in Entertainment Weekly. The guy in it from *Friends *said he saw Hurt and Gary Oldman talking for quite a while, and then Oldman walked over to him. He asked, “What was John asking you about?” and Oldman replied, “I have no idea…”
I’ve never been able to get thru that movie from start to finish. It starts out okay, for your basic sci-fi popcorn flick, plus what’s not to love about skin-tight cat-suits wearing Heather Graham and Lacey Chabert (not to mention Mimi Rogers!) But once they crash on the planet I always lose interest. I’ve seen the very end but must have missed all the ‘rapey’ dialog, have to watch it again! 
Probably fair for me to note after defending Hurt that Lost In Space does show a good enough actor can rise above crap ( at least a bit ). Gary Oldman is the only actor worth watching in that failure. He chews scenery with a over-the-top Doctor Smithian gusto that works perfectly - nobody’s ever done a more note perfect take on deliberately hammy over-acting :D.
But then again comparing Hurt to Oldman is a bit unfair. It is Gary Oldman, after all ;).
Wow. No, that’s not what happened. The women were supposedly killed by the spider robots. (Smith actually killed them but that’s the story he told Will.)
Smith’s line was, “After the women were savaged, I became the father Will never had.” After killing the women to emotionally isolate Will (and telling Will the spiders had killed them) Smith convinced Will that everything was due to his father abandoning them and set himself up as a father-substitute.
He was great in A History of Violence and Mr. Brooks
He’s far from stiff or emotionally repressed in Children of a Lesser God and Kiss of the Spider Woman. In those movies, he’s actually the sensitive one who’s trying to get the closed-off characters to open up. He’s also very good (again as a non-repressed character) in Broadcast News.
If you want to see good performances by an actor, just looking at the shitty movies isn’t going to help. Watch the good ones and you’ll see why Hurt was such a popular leading man in his prime.
There are two types of actors: Those who can really act and those who can play one role really well. Contrast Hurt with Tom Hanks.
The scenes they cut from the Hulk movie he was in were cut for a very, very good reason… he did fine as Thunderbolt Ross so long as he was yelling and waving his arms at people. Maybe they should’ve cast him as the Hulk?
However, I do love his line… “Where does she find these guys?”
As I read this, I could hear the frost crinkling in the corners of my TV.
He is unusually good in playing self-centered jerks. The Doctor and Mr. Brooks come to mind immediately.
Also, The Big Chill.
Bwahahahah! Awesome.
Non-repressed?! Well, I guess he wasn’t supposed to be ‘repressed’ but his character in that was certainly, ah, un-demonstrative maybe? He wasn’t *repressing *anything, but he wasn’t *expressing *much either! Given the opening sequence showing him as a kid, I felt he was supposed to be a high-functioning but essentially emotionally shallow, ah, idiot. Almost having what today would be called mild Asperger’s…
Are we talking about William Hurt or Harrison Ford?
I don’t agree. He’s not too bright, sure. That’s the point of the character. But he’s able to recognize that, and he’s always trying to get Holly Hunter to help him out. Even in the opening scene that you referenced, he’s frustrated by his limitations and thinks that he won’t get anywhere in life because all he can do is look good. He even has the idea to cry on camera with the rape victim so it will make him look better. I really don’t see that character as emotionally limited or Asperger’s-like at all.
If anyone’s the awkward one in that movie, it’s Albert Brooks.
I saw him perform live in Richard III, he was good in that.
Dance until your feet hurt. Sing until your lungs hurt. Act until you’re William Hurt.
He also played Mr Rochester, who was also a self centered jerk but a tormented, Byronic one: unfortunately William Hurt played him with all the dark demonic passion of an insurance claims evaluator telling Jane Eyre that her policy doesn’t cover windscreens.