Actor: William Hurt

William Hurt was nominated four times in five years, winning Best Actor for Kiss of the Spider Woman, playing a gay man imprisoned in Brazil in a performance that has been reassessed repeatedly since.

Children of a Lesser God, Broadcast News and Body Heat filled the same period, and Broadcast News gives him the most interesting version of the persona: a genial anchor who is not intelligent and knows it.

He worked steadily afterward in supporting roles, including A History of Violence, which earned a fifth nomination for about ten minutes of screen time.

He played Thaddeus Ross across five Marvel films and died in 2022. The later career was quieter than the mid-1980s peak by some distance.