Mary Beth Hurt, a Tony Award-nominated actor who appeared in films including \u201cInteriors,\u201d \u201cThe World According to Garp\u201d and \u201cThe Age of Innocence,\u201d has died. She was 79. <\/p>\n
Hurt died Saturday of Alzheimer\u2019s disease<\/a>, her daughter Molly Schrader announced Sunday in an Instagram post. Hurt\u2019s husband, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Paul Schrader,<\/a> confirmed to the Hollywood Reporter<\/a> that she died at an assisted living facility in Jersey City, N.J.. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s in 2015. <\/p>\n \u201cShe 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,\u201d Molly Schrader wrote in her post<\/a>. \u201cAlthough we\u2019re grieving there is some comfort in knowing she is no longer suffering and is reunited with her sisters in peace.\u201d <\/p>\n Hurt made her New York stage debut in a 1973 in an off-Broadway production of \u201cAs You Like It,\u201d according to Playbill<\/a>. She made her Broadway debut in 1974, appearing in brief productions of \u201cLove for Love\u201d and \u201cThe Rules of the Game.\u201d She appeared in 15 Broadway productions total over the course of her career. <\/p>\n While Hurt told the New York Times<\/a> in 1989 that she was pleased with her career, she also said that \u201cthere\u2019s not too much reward\u201d for doing theater in New York. <\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t make a living doing it,\u201d she told the outlet. \u201cI am happy with my career, but it\u2019s very hard to maintain. I don\u2019t sing. I can\u2019t do musicals. The only way I can make a living doing theater is on Broadway. And it\u2019s a terrible situation. There aren\u2019t many straight plays on Broadway. And Broadway needs straight plays. They provide a special voice that shouldn\u2019t be stilled.\u201d<\/p>\n She earned her first Tony Award nomination<\/a> in 1976 for portraying Rose Trelawny in Arthur Wing Pinero\u2019s \u201cTrelawny of the \u2018Wells.\u2019\u201d Hurt\u2019s two other nominations were for her roles in Beth Henley\u2019s \u201cCrimes of the Heart\u201d (1982) and Michael Frayn\u2019s \u201cBenefactors\u201d (1986). <\/p>\n Hurt made her film debut in Woody Allen\u2019s 1978 drama, \u201cInteriors,\u201d where she portrayed the directionless would-be artist Joey opposite her more successful siblings Renata and Flyn, played by Diane Keaton and Kristin Griffith, respectively. Her performance earned her a BAFTA nomination. <\/p>\n In \u201cThe World According to Garp\u201d (1982), Hurt played Helen Holm, the eventual wife of Robin Williams\u2019 titular T.S. Garp. She also appeared in Martin Scorsese\u2019s adaptation of Edith Wharton\u2019s \u201cThe Age of Innocence\u201d (1993) and her husband Paul Schrader\u2019s \u201cLight Sleeper\u201d (1992) and \u201cAffliction\u201d (1997).<\/p>\n Born Mary Beth Supinger in Marshalltown, Iowa, on Sept. 25, 1946, Hurt studied drama at the University of Iowa before pursuing graduate studies at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She married actor William Hurt <\/a>in 1971 and took his name before they divorced in 1982. She married Schrader, whom she met through a publicist, in 1983.<\/p>\n \u201cMary Beth saved me,\u201d Schrader, who has been open about his trouble with drugs and alcohol in the 1980s, told the New Yorker<\/a> in 2023. After moving her to a care facility in 2019 following her Alzheimer\u2019s diagnosis, Schrader moved Hurt during the pandemic back to their New York lake house, where he\u2019d built her a greenhouse because she loved gardening. <\/p>\n One of Hurt\u2019s childhood babysitters was fellow Marshalltown native Jean Seberg, a family acquaintance who would go on to star in films such as Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s<\/a> \u201cBreathless<\/a>\u201d and Otto Preminger\u2019s<\/a> \u201cSt. Joan\u201d before her tragic death in 1979<\/a>. Hurt played Seberg, in voiceover, in Mark Rappaport\u2019s \u201cFrom the Journals of Jean Seberg\u201d (1995). <\/p>\n David Hare, who directed Hurt in \u201cThe Secret Rapture,\u201d described her as \u201ca fine ensemble actress\u201d to the New York Times in 1989. <\/p>\n \u201cShe has the best of the English and the best of the American traditions,\u201d Hare told the outlet. \u201cWhat marks English actors is that they can turn on a sixpence \u2014 there isn\u2019t anything technically they can\u2019t do. They\u2019re supple, like musicians, and from the technical facility they acquire freedom. And in Mary Beth\u2019s case there is a sort of improvisatory gift, a willingness to make the performance fresh every time.\u201d<\/p>\n Hurt is survived by her husband and two children, Molly and Sam. <\/p>\n