Personal Life
Hurt is fluent in French and maintains a home outside Paris. He is the step-grandson of Henry Luce, founder of Time magazine and actress-writer Claire Booth Luce through his mother's marriage to Henry Luce's son from his first marriage, Henry Luce III. Hurt was married to Mary Beth Hurt from 1971 to 1982.
Hurt was involved in a 1980s lawsuit with Sandra Jennings, who alleged that the two shared a common-law marriage. While he was still married, Hurt and Jennings began a relationship in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1981. Jennings became pregnant in the spring of 1982 which precipitated Hurt's divorce from Mary Beth Hurt, after which Hurt and Jennings relocated to South Carolina, a state that recognized common-law marriages. Hurt and Jennings, never officially married, later separated, and Jennings sued him in New York, seeking recognition of the "marriage" under South Carolina law. The New York court, which did not recognize common-law marriage and was reluctant to recognize a common-law marriage originating in South Carolina, found in Hurt's favor that no common-law marriage existed.
Hurt dated Marlee Matlin for one year, and they lived together for two years. In her 2009 autobiography, I'll Scream Later, Matlin claimed their relationship involved considerable drug abuse and physical abuse by Hurt. In response to the accusations aired on CNN on April 13, 2009, Hurt's agent declined to respond, but Hurt issued a statement the following day: "My own recollection is that we both apologized and both did a great deal to heal our lives. Of course, I did and do apologize for any pain I caused. And I know we have both grown. I wish Marlee and her family nothing but good."
Hurt has four children: Jeanne with actress Sandrine Bonnaire, Alex with Sandra Jennings, and two sons, Sam Hurt and William Hurt, from his 1989–92 marriage to Heidi Henderson.
During the filming of Kiss of the Spider Woman, Hurt and a friend were threatened at gunpoint but were let go several hours later.
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“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To ‘see the light’ too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)