Oscar Winner William Is Texas Ranger in Bonnie and Clyde Remake - AARP Everyw... TV for Grownups

William Hurt Goes to School

The Oscar-winning actor and a star of the TV miniseries Bonnie and Clyde is truly a lifelong learner

Joseph Viles William Hurt plays Texas Ranger Frank Hamer in the cable TV miniseries "Bonnie and Clyde." is back in school. Having spent last spring in Louisiana filming , the new television miniseries that appears on three cable networks (A&E, Lifetime and History) simultaneously on Dec. 8 and 9, Hurt devoted this fall to classes in computer science and at . "I'd been yearning to do it for 15 years," he says. "I'm three times as old as the kids in the class." Everett Collection Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty portrayed the infamous crime couple in the landmark 1967 film "Bonnie and Clyde." The sight of the bespectacled 63-year-old, a theology major at back in the day, sitting in a college classroom isn't quite as incongruous as it might be for other famous actors. Hurt, who won an for and who has three other Academy Award nominations on his résumé, has always seemed the bookish sort. In the miniseries, however, he plays a decidedly nonstudious type: real-life , who led the chase for the notorious outlaw couple and eventually tracked them to their bloody end. The role is expanded from the landmark 1967 / film version of the criminals' story. In that movie, Hamer — played by — was lampooned as a clueless lawman, prompting a defamation of character lawsuit and an out-of-court settlement with his family. Courtesy A&E Emile Hirsch and Holliday Grainger play the murderous, bank-robbing duo in the 2013 TV miniseries "Bonnie and Clyde." The new Bonnie and Clyde stars and in the roles of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. The stoic Hurt lends Hamer appropriate heft — the man exchanged gunfire in 100 shootouts and is in the , after all — depicting him as a worthy adversary for the gun-crazy . The series also reunites Hurt with for the first time since the two costarred in in 1987. Hunter, 55, plays Emma Parker, Bonnie's mother. Hurt plays down their reunion; the two don't share any screen time and they hardly crossed paths during filming, sharing just a few script read-throughs. Still, he allows that it was nice to have another seasoned vet among the fresh-faced cast. "Holly and I are well-trained actors, so we had common ground," he says. "We could talk to each other about scenes. It's like docking a destroyer. You have to know what you're doing." Last month, Hurt tackled another juicy small-screen role, playing physicist Richard Feynman in Science Channel's well-received . He's also to appear soon in a pair of feature films: , a romance that drew big buzz at the Toronto Film Festival, and , a romantic comedy opening in theaters on Valentine's Day. Clearly this is a man who means to continue working for some time to come. "I'm not going to retire; that means retreat," he says emphatically. "I'm not going to retreat. I have a function, I have a purpose in life. It's a vital purpose. So does everybody else. So I think we need to get everybody to dust off the meaning of the word 'retirement.' " He says he's after challenging roles. "I'm still doing new work," he stresses. "Otherwise it's just cashing in on things you did before. That's not me, and that's not what I'm doing right now. I'm still a living artist." Austin O'Connor writes on entertainment and lifestyle topics for AARP Media.

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