Hurd Hatfield
| Hurd Hatfield | |
|---|---|
Publicity photo of Hatfield, 1945
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| Born |
William Rukard Hurd Hatfield December 7, 1917 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | December 26, 1998 (aged 81) Rathcormac, County Cork, Ireland |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Resting place | Abbeystrowry Cemetery, Skibbereen, Ireland |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1944–1991 |
| Notable work | The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) |
Hurd Hatfield (December 7, 1917 – December 26, 1998) was an American actor. He was best known for often playing characters of handsome, narcissistic young men, most notably Dorian Gray in the film The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945).
Hatfield was born William Rukard Hurd Hatfield in New York City to William Henry Hatfield (died 1954), an attorney who served as deputy attorney general for New York, and his wife, Adele (née McGuire). He was educated at Columbia University before traveling to London, England where he studied drama and began acting in theatre.
He returned to America for his film debut in Dragon Seed (1944), in which he and his co-stars (Katharine Hepburn, Akim Tamiroff, Aline MacMahon, Turhan Bey) portrayed Chinese peasants. It was Hatfield's second film, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), that made him a star. As Oscar Wilde's ageless anti-hero, Hatfield received widespread acclaim for his good looks as much as for his acting ability. However, the actor was ambivalent about the role and his performance. "The film didn't make me popular in Hollywood," he commented later. "It was too odd, too avant-garde, too ahead of its time. The decadence, the hints of bisexuality and so on, made me a leper! Nobody knew I had a sense of humour, and people wouldn't even have lunch with me."
His subsequent films, The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), The Beginning or the End (1947), and The Unsuspected (1947) were successful, but Hatfield's career began to lose momentum very quickly. Other films include The Left Handed Gun (1958), King of Kings (as Pontius Pilate) (1961), El Cid (1961), Harlow (1965), The Boston Strangler (1968), King David (1985) and Her Alibi (1989).
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