Iowa-born stage and screen actress and three-time Tony Award nominee Mary Beth Hurt died on March 28 in Jersey City, New Jersey. She was 79. Her daughter, Molly Schrader, confirmed the death on Instagram, writing that her mother had succumbed after "a decade long battle" with Alzheimer's disease, which had been diagnosed in 2015.
"Yesterday morning we lost my mom, Mary Beth, to Alzheimer's after a decade long battle with the disease," Molly
wrote in a March 29 post. "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."
Born Mary Beth Supinger on Sept. 26, 1946, in Marshalltown, Iowa, Hurt said the seed of her career was planted early. "I think I was born an actress," she told
Theatrelife.com in 2010. "I was always making shows and having my sisters and my friends play parts in them." It wasn't until she saw a production at her high school—while still in eighth grade—that she realized performance was something she could actually pursue professionally, she said.
She went on to study drama at the University of Iowa before enrolling in NYU's graduate acting program, graduating in 1971. Three years later, she made her Broadway debut in "Love for Love," and by 1975, she had starred in "The Member of the Wedding" and "Trelawny of the 'Wells,'" the latter earning her her first Tony Award nomination. Two more Tony nominations would follow over the course of her career.
Her film work proved equally distinguished. Woody Allen cast her in "Interiors" in 1978, and she appeared in the acclaimed adaptation of John Irving's novel "The World According to Garp" in 1982, as well as M. Night Shyamalan's "Lady in the Water" in 2006, according to her
IMDb biography. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby,
writing in 1981, captured the essence of what made her so watchable: she had a "remarkable ability to change her looks almost as easily as other actors change their expressions from a smile to a smirk," adding, "She's a complete sort of a [sic] actress, the kind that movies can well use."
Hurt married actor
William Hurt in 1972, taking his last name, and the two divorced in 1982. William Hurt—a four-time Academy Award nominee trained at Tufts University and the Juilliard School—was among Hollywood's most celebrated actors of the same era. She later married filmmaker
Paul Schrader, the screenwriter behind "Taxi Driver" and director of "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.” Their daughter, Molly, survives her.
Schrader reflected on his wife's passing in a Facebook
post on March 30, recalling an entry from his late father's handwritten diary—a single line marking his own mother's death on Thanksgiving 1978. "I've looked at this entry over the years and wondered how I'd feel in his place," Schrader wrote. "Now I'm in that place."
Molly Schrader said that while the family mourns, there is solace in knowing her mother is at peace. "Although we're grieving there is some comfort in knowing she is no longer suffering and is reunited with her sisters in peace," she wrote on Instagram.
