Mary Beth Hurt, the prolific stage and film actress who starred alongside Robin Williams in “The World According to Garp” and in Woody Allen’s “Interiors,” has died, her daughter announced Sunday. She was 79.
“Yesterday morning we lost my mom, Mary Beth, to Alzheimer’s after a decade long battle with the disease,” Molly Schrader wrote on Instagram. “She was an actress, a wife, a sister, a mother, an aunt, a friend, and she took on all those [roles] 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.”
Born Mary Beth Supinger in Marshalltown, Iowa, she was married to William Hurt from 1971 to 1982, and remarried to director Paul Schrader in 1983, appearing in his films, including “Light Sleeper,” “Affliction” and “The Walker.”
Hurt was known as a crafty character actress who took on several supporting roles in film, making her debut in Allen’s 1978 drama “Interiors” as an artist who struggled to emerge from the shadow of her ambitious older siblings. She later appeared in “Chilly Scenes of Winter” and, three years later, George Roy Hill’s “The World According to Garp,” playing the wife of Williams’ character.
She also had roles in “Parents,” “Six Degrees of Separation,” “The Age of Innocence” and more. But her background was in theater – which she studied at the University of Iowa and the Tisch School of the Arts – and was a frequent star both on and off-Broadway in New York, earning three Tony Award nominations, including for “Trelawny of the ‘Wells,’” “Crimes of the Heart” and “Benefactors.”
Hurt is survived by her husband and children, Molly Schrader and Sam Hurt.
