Mary Beth Hurt, Tony-nominated Broadway and film actor, dies at 79

By Canadian Press on March 30, 2026.

NEW YORK (AP) — Mary Beth Hurt, a Tony Award-nominated actor who starred on Broadway in “Benefactors” with Glenn Close and reunited with Close for the movie “The World According to Garp,” has died. She was 79.

Hurt died Saturday in New Jersey after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2015, according to her daughter, Molly Schrader. Hurt was the wife of filmmaker Paul Schrader and appeared in his movies “Affliction” and “Light Sleeper.” He had moved into Hunt’s senior-living facility in 2023 to stay close to her.

“She was an actress, a wife, a sister, a mother, an aunt, a friend, and she took on all those rolls with grace and a kind ferocity,” her daughter wrote in an Instagram post. “Although we’re grieving there is some comfort in knowing she is no longer suffering and is reunited with her sisters in peace.”

The Iowa-born Hurt, who graduated from New York University’s graduate theater studies program in 1969, earned three Tony nominations during her career, for performances in “Trelawny of the Wells” in 1975, “Crimes of the Heart” in 1981 and “Benefactors” in 1985. She was last on Broadway playing a nun in a revival of “The House of Blue Leaves” in 2011 with Ben Stiller and Edie Falco.

“I’ve never been extremely comfortable playing the lead,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2010. “I don’t like the responsibility; there’s a feeling that I have to be good. Besides, I found secondary parts much more interesting, especially when I was younger and the ingénue roles were pretty bland.”

Her movie credits include “Six Degrees of Separation” in 1993, “Chilly Scenes of Winter” in 1979, “The Age of Innocence” in 1993, “Autumn in New York” in 2000, “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” in 2005, “The Dead Girl” in 2006, “Lady in the Water” also 2006 and “Young Adult” in 2011. She made her made her big-screen debut in Woody Allen’s “Interiors” in 1978.

Hurt was married to late actor William Hurt from 1971 to 1982 and married Schrader in 1983. She is also survived by a son, Sam.

Mark Kennedy, The Associated Press

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