Mary Beth Hurt, a quietly commanding actress whose nuanced performances enriched some of American cinema and theater’s most celebrated works, died on March 29, 2026, in Manhattan. She was 79. Her husband, filmmaker Paul Schrader, and daughter Molly Schrader confirmed the news, noting that she had lived with Alzheimer’s disease since 2015.
Born Mary Beth Supinger on September 25, 1946, in Marshalltown, Iowa — the same small town that produced actress Jean Seberg, who once babysat her — Hurt came to acting through the theater halls of the University of Iowa and later NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She made her New York stage debut in 1974 and never really left, appearing on Broadway fifteen times over nearly four decades.
Her film debut came in Woody Allen’s Interiors (1978), where she held her own against a cast that included Diane Keaton, Geraldine Page, and E.G. Marshall. She went on to appear in Chilly Scenes of Winter, The World According to Garp, Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, and Six Degrees of Separation, among many others. She earned three Tony nominations — for Trelawny of the “Wells”, Crimes of the Heart (for which she also won an Obie Award), and Benefactors — and was beloved by directors and fellow actors for an improvisatory gift.
She is survived by her husband, Paul Schrader, her daughter Molly, and her son Sam.