A Star is Born

William Hurt in BODY HEAT

From the moment of William Hurt's first appearances in 1980's wiggy Altered States and 1981's pleasingly witless Eyewitness, this actor's impressive arsenal of tall, Waspy good looks, apparent smarts and seductively furtive gaze marked him as a potential postmodern Gary Cooper. He seemed like a guy aware he was destined for big things, juiced but able to activate the circuit breaker to regulate his own voltage. But it was Body Heat that made William Hurt, turned him into the leading man of the '80s. In the beautifully crafted role of a smug Florida lawyer about to take the big fall, Hurt brilliantly delineated the fatal hubris of a guy gone soft from believing he's way too fast and hip for the room. As breakthroughs go, Body Heat stands out on two counts. One, it wasn't a mass audience hit. Two, it didn't keep Hurt from going into eclipse a decade later. But it was most certainly a classic breakthrough--no one in Hollywood missed it.

Chosen, if legend is to be believed, over contenders like Tom Berenger, Don Johnson, Kevin Kline and Kevin Costner, Hurt bagged a stellar role. As written by Kasdan, Ned Racine, a randy, none-too-particular lawyer, is a replay Walter Neff, Fred MacMurray's randy, none-too-particular insurance salesman in Double Indemnity. Hurt and Kathleen Turner (making a killer movie debut in a replay of Barbara Stanwyck's Indemnity role) spark like a pair of street dogs in rut. In fact, Turner is such a show-stopper that it's all too easy to overlook how brilliant Hurt is.

And Hurt is brilliant, utterly convincing as the guy to whom Turner says, "You're not too smart, are you? I like that in a man." For sheer Hollywood breakthrough mojo, it's hard to beat the scene in which Hurt peers lustfully through the windows of Turner's house and then smashes his way in to take her on the spot. It's a Rhett Butler star turn, and Hurt grabs for it, making it as hilarious as it is hot.

Body Heat cleared the way for a run of showy movies: The Big Chill, Kiss of the Spider Woman, which won Hurt an Oscar--Oscar nominations, too, for Children of a Lesser God and Broadcast News. Then, around the time of The Accidental Tourist, which reteamed him with (a badly miscast) Turner, things soured and lesser actors began to pass Hurt by. He didn't help matters by being incoherent and pretentious in interviews. And what to make of his sometimes distracted work in such wayward projects as I Love You to Death, A Time of Destiny, Alice, Until the End of the World, The Plague and Mr. Wonderful? Hurt's textbook career breakthrough had a sequel--a textbook career breakdown.

Some make Hurt as a likely comeback candidate. A tough call, though--comebacks being as miraculous and tricky a phenomenon as breakthroughs. He'd have to get as lucky as Travolta did. Should Hurt be so blessed (or is it cursed?), it won't seem so improbable to anyone who looks back at what happened in Body Heat.

Nicole Kidman in TO DIE FOR

Anyone who would like to believe that a big-screen breakthrough can necessarily be engineered is easily disabused of that notion by looking at the case of Nicole Kidman. As Mrs. Tom Cruise, she stood an excellent chance, one might think, of being elevated to the first ranks by starring opposite her husband in a giant, good-spirited period romance filmed in glorious 70 millimeter. Surely her screen stuff would show itself for what it was, and Tom's presence would skew the odds heavily in favor of success for both of them. Well, the result was 1992's Far and Away, a big, immensely stupid dud in which Kidman did show her stuff (she was very good), but Tom, perhaps having taken too much care of his wife and too little of himself, played such an inexplicable blockhead (with the worst haircut in Cruise history) that the massive, overblown movie never took off. So much for taking Hollywood by storm.

Truth is, Kidman had shown herself to be "star material" long before she met Tom. Her potential was probably evident to Cruise when he had her cast in the deplorable Days of Thunder, and her palpable ambition may well have been much of what he fell for in her (Kidman was, and is, a like spirit to Cruise on many counts).

Back in 1989 she had been introduced to American audiences in the Phillip Noyce thriller Dead Calm, where she played Sam Neill's wife with an aplomb and fierceness that utterly belied her 22 years. With no stars to guide it, Dead Calm tanked, but Kidman won a foothold in the U.S. and was offered the lead (eventually Greta Scacchi's part) in the plausibility-free thriller Shattered, She chose instead a supporting part in Days of Thunder--a smart move not because she ended up marrying Cruise, but because (1) the smaller role was in the bigger film, and (2) if the bigger film tanked (it did) it wouldn't be her fault.

Marriage to Cruise could be seen as obvious career luck in a way, but Kidman had to wait for the odd kind of luck that makes for breakthroughs. She was given a righteous plum of a role in the big-budget Billy Bathgate in 1991, and she was terrific in it, but nobody liked the film. Then came the big push with the fruitless Far and Away. Next she was perfectly cast as a hilariously malicious femme fatale wife in 1993's Malice, and was terrific in it, but nobody liked that film either. The same year she was horribly cast as the saintly wife in 1993's My Life, and she was not terrific, and, again, nobody liked the film. Some people were writing Kidman off as Mrs. Tom Cruise by this point, but many people knew better. Jane Campion, hot off The Piano, had her eye on Kidman for the then far-off-in-the-future Portrait of a Lady. In the nearer term, Joel Schumacher saw in Kidman's nervy bad girl chops a gal after Batman's heart. Right there, Kidman had a role that would give her the monster hit she needed for broad exposure. Her true breakthrough came, though, in the sly, small To Die For, directed by the man least likely to hire Tom Cruise's wife, Gus Van Sant.

Kidman wrested her breakthrough role in To Die For--which wasn't just a role, it was the whole film--from the grasp of many powerful competitors, and she smacked it right out of the park. As the ruthlessly ambitious Suzanne Stone, she was bad, she was strong, she was beautiful, she was funny and she was offbeat--that last element being crucial in the task of winning over all those who might have held her husband against her. To Die For was the film that melted the defenses of those who doubted Kidman, and justified the faith of those who'd watched her come along. That's exactly what breakthroughs are all about.

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Virginia Campbell is one of the executive editors of Movieline and Charles Oakley is a frequent contributor.

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