Oregon Public Broadcasting

Many people were first introduced to James Tyrone in the play Long Day's Journey Into Night in the 1962 film adaptation.

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Academy-Award winning actor William Hurt

In Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, James Tyrone is the head of a seriously dysfunctional family spending a day at their Connecticut summerhouse. In the film, Tyrone is played with haunted, wounded intensity by Sir Ralph Richardson.

Beginning this weekend, the Academy-Award winning actor William Hurt will play the role of James Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night at Artists Repertory Theater in Portland. 

He'll have honed the performance after a successful month with the Sydney Theater Company in Australia.

When I spoke with William Hurt recently, he said it didn't matter that the play is set in America, written by an American playwright.  The Australians got it.