William Pains, who burst into stardom because the hapless licensed official Ned Racine in “Body Heat” and gained an Oscar for handiest actor for “Kiss of the Spider Lady,” portraying a homosexual man sharing a Brazilian penal complex cell with a revolutionary, died at his residence in Portland, Ore., on Sunday. He changed into 71.

A son, Alexander Pains, acknowledged the motive changed into concerns of prostate cancer.

Mr. Pains, tall, blond and talking in a measured cadence that lent a cerebral quality to his characters, changed into a number one man in a pair of of the most current movies of the 1980s, including “The Spacious Take a seat again” (1983), “Children of a Lesser God” (1986), “Broadcast News” (1987) and “The Unintentional Tourist” (1988).

In later years, Mr. Pains transitioned from main man to supporting roles, and changed into nominated for an Academy Award a fourth time for “A Historic previous of Violence” (2005).

Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Cases in 1985 of the “fair appropriate fulfillment” of Mr. Pains and his co-critical individual, Raul Julia, in “Kiss of the Spider Lady.”

“Mr. Pains gained a troublesome-earned handiest actor award on the Cannes Film Competition for a performance that is crafty within the initiating, moderately nurtured and lastly stirring in profound, unanticipated ways,” she wrote. “What begins out as a campy, facetious catalog of Hollywood trivia becomes an terribly transferring movie about manhood, heroism and enjoy.”

Despite his successes as a number one man in Hollywood, he told The Cases in 1990 that “theater is a language I focus on better or am more tuned into than English.”

“Even one second onstage is a glacier of comprehension,” he added. “That’s where the work is. And it’s as charming to envision as any different science.”

In a 2009 interview with The Cases, he defined: “I don’t bear to be the critical individual, bodily. My ideal offering is my thought. It isn’t my face.”

His means, he acknowledged, changed into to “usually try to produce my physique as powerful a subject of Silly Putty as I will, and in some sense sculpt that to be completely acceptable to topics and the metaphors that are within the play at hand.”

A corpulent obituary is being ready.

Christine Chung and Neil Genzlinger contributed reporting.