Mary Beth Hurt, who was nominated for three Tony Awards and starred in films such as “Interiors” and “The World According to Garp,” died Sunday of Alzheimer’s disease. She was 79 years old.
Hart’s death was confirmed in a joint Facebook post by her daughter Molly Schrader and her husband, writer/director Paul Schrader.
“She was an actress, a wife, a sister, a mother, an aunt, and a friend, all of which she assumed with grace and kind ferocity,” the post said. “While we are all saddened, we take some comfort in knowing that she is no longer suffering and is peacefully reunited with her sisters.”
Hart has worked on stage, film and television, collaborating with her husband Schrader on “Affliction” and “Light Sleeper.”
Born Mary Beth Superpinger in Marshalltown, Iowa, she was married to actor William Hurt from 1971 to 1981. She studied acting at the University of Iowa and then at New York University, making her debut on the New York stage in 1974.
She was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in Crimes of the Heart and won Obie Awards for Trelawney of the Wells and The Benefactors.
Woody Allen cast Hart in her first film role in 1978’s Interiors, in which she played one of three sisters facing family breakdown. Next, she performed “The World According to Garp,” in which she played Helen Holm Garp, “A Cold Scene,” and Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence,” and “Six Degrees of Separation.”
She told the New York Times in 1989 that she likes to choose her movie roles carefully. “Fifty percent of the roles that are offered to me in movies are nothing. It’s not about size. There are no roles that interest me. So I do roles that interest me, unless I haven’t done it for a long time. Then I do roles that are not interesting.”
On television, Hart made guest appearances on shows such as “Law & Order,” “Thirtysomething,” and “Kojak.”
She received an Indie Spirit Award nomination for 2006’s The Dead Girl and also appeared in Young Adult, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Lady in the Water, and Change in the Air.
She is survived by Schroeder, a daughter, and a son.
