Tony-Nominated Actress Mary Beth Hurt, Star of Garp, Dies at 79

Mary Beth Hurt, the Tony-nominated actress who built a distinguished career by deliberately avoiding top billing, died Saturday at an assisted living facility in Jersey City, New Jersey. She was 79. Her daughter announced her death on Sunday.

Her husband, Oscar-nominated writer and director Paul Schrader, confirmed her death. Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2015, Hurt had until recently been living in a Manhattan facility, with Schrader in a separate apartment in the same building, before her move to the New Jersey care home.

Hurt made her film debut in Woody Allen's Interiors (1978), playing Joey, the second of three sisters navigating the emotional fallout of their family's disintegration and their mother Eve's (Geraldine Page) descent into mental illness. The performance earned her a BAFTA nomination for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles at the 32nd British Academy Film Awards.

In Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979), directed by Joan Micklin Silver, she played the emotionally unavailable romantic obsession of John Heard's character. Three years later, George Roy Hill cast her as Helen Holm in The World According to Garp (1982), the pivotal role of a smart, fiercely independent woman who catches T.S. Garp's (Robin Williams) eye, marries him, betrays his trust and ultimately becomes a passionate defender of his legacy. She rarely enjoyed top billing during her career, and that was the way she preferred it.

Her film work extended well into the following decade, encompassing The Age of Innocence (1993), in which she played Regina Beaufort in Martin Scorsese's adaptation, Six Degrees of Separation (1993), Parents (1989) and Defenseless (1991). She also collaborated with Schrader on Light Sleeper (1992) and Affliction (1997).

Her stage career was equally formidable. Trained at the University of Iowa and the Tisch School of the Arts, Hurt originated the role of Meg in the Manhattan Theatre Club's off-Broadway production of Crimes of the Heart, earning an Obie Award before accompanying the production to Broadway. She accumulated three Tony Award nominations across her career, for Trelawny of the Wells, Crimes of the Heart and Benefactors, Michael Frayn's drama about an architect's efforts to revitalize a London neighborhood. Her third nomination came in 1986 for Benefactors, a production that also brought her alongside longtime friend Glenn Close, whom she had first met on Love for Love and with whom she had co-starred in Garp.

Hurt is survived by her husband and her children, Molly Schrader and Sam Hurt.