Bud Cort, the co-star of Harold Ashby’s black comedy classic Harold and Maude, has died. He was 77.
Cort died Wednesday in Connecticut of complications from pneumonia after a long illness, friend and producer Dorian Hannaway told The Hollywood Reporter. “Bud Cort was a savant at acting, at theater, and he was blessed with a passion for this as a young man, as he loved art,” she said.
She added that Cort used to cut school to see live theater matinees of Funny Girl, starring Barbra Streisand, in the 1960s: “He would hang out at the stage door with Barbra’s sister, Roslyn Kind. He would go to every performance he could. He just loved the theater. He wanted to be that creative person from the time he was a child.”
Born Walter Edward Cox on March 29, 1948, in New Rochelle, New York, Cort attended NYU Tisch School of the Arts for a brief period and studied acting with Stella Adler before going professional as a performer.
His breakout role came when director Robert Altman cast him in a supporting role in M*A*S*H (1970), then offered him a lead role in Brewster McCloud (1970). It all led to him playing Harold in Harold and Maude (1971), opposite Ruth Gordon as Maude.
Cort said of that role in a 2012 interview with the online publication Trainwreck’d Society: “As I was reading the script, I immediately knew it was going to be a classic film for the ages. There was no denying it. The studio was stumped on how to publicize it. The art for newspapers and theater posters was plain black, block lettering on an empty background; it was more appropriate for The Ten Commandments! Truthfully, it’s success came from the people. The groundswell of word-of-mouth dropkicked it over so many goalposts both here and abroad that Paramount had to rerelease it.”
Subsequent movie roles for Cort included Electric Dreams (1984), Dogma (1999), Pollock (2000) and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. (2004). He also made TV appearances on such shows as Ugly Betty, Criminal Minds and Arrested Development.
Cort also did voice work, including playing the Toyman in Superman: The Animated Series and other series in the DC animated universe.
In 1979, he survived a major car crash in Los Angeles in which he was seriously injured. His work in film and theater continued, however, and led him to co-found the LA Classic Theatre Works with Richard Dreyfuss and Rene Auberjonois.
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