Veteran actor Mary Beth Hurt no more

LOS ANGELES: Tony-nominated actor Mary Beth Hurt has passed away. She was 79.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, Hurt died on Saturday. Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2015, she had until recently been living in another facility in Manhattan, with her husband in another apartment in the building.

Mourning the demise of his mother, Molly Schrader on Instagram wrote, “Yesterday morning we lost my mom, Mary Beth, to Alzheimer’s after a decade long battle with the disease. 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. Although we’re grieving there is some comfort in knowing she is no longer suffering and is reunited with her sisters in peace.”

Hurt is best known for her roles in Interiors, Chilly Scenes of Winter and The World According to Garp. Hurt also brought a sophisticated flair to James Ivory’s Slaves of New York with her turn as a gallery owner, and she portrayed a 1950s mom whose quirky behavior convinces her son (Bryan Madorsky) that she and her husband (Randy Quaid) are cannibals in another 1989 film, the Bob Balaban-directed black comedy Parents.

Rest well Mary Beth Hurt (1946-2026), most recently featured on our screens on 35mm just last month in her feature film debut INTERIORS (1978). The film screened last month as part of our retrospective honoring the late Diane Keaton.

Our condolences to Paul and their… pic.twitter.com/1jsP7DT7vj

— Film at Lincoln Center (@FilmLinc) March 29, 2026

And in Six Degrees of Separation (1993), Hurt played one of the New York socialites who falls into the web of deceit created by a charismatic young man (Will Smith) pretending to be the son of Sidney Poitier.

Hurt appeared 15 times on Broadway from 1974-2011 and in 1982 received one her three career Tony nominations for her turn as Meg Magrath, one of three Mississippi sisters facing trauma in their lives, in the Beth Henley-written Crimes of the Heart. (Jessica Lange starred in the role opposite Diane Keaton and Sissy Speck in the 1986 Bruce Beresford-directed film adaptation.)

Hurt’s Broadway resume included 1974’s The Rules of the Game; 1975’s The Member of the Wedding (where Close was her understudy); 1976’s Secret Service and Boy Meets Girl; 1977’s The Cherry Orchard; 1981’s Twyla Tharp Dance; 1983’s The Misanthrope; 1996’s A Delicate Balance (from Edward Albee); 2008’s Top Girls; and 2011’s The House of Blue Leaves, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

She also worked on the big screen in A Change of Seasons (1980), Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence (1993), D.A.R.Y.L. (1985), the Schrader-penned Bringing Out the Dead (1999), The Family Man (2000), M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water (2006), The Dead Girl (2006), Untraceable (2008) and Change in the Air (2018). (ANI)