Bud Cort, an actor best known for starring alongside Ruth Gordon in 1971’s “Harold and Maude,” has died following a lengthy illness. He was 77 years old.
Dorian Hannaway, a friend and longtime TV producer, told KABC that Cort died on Wednesday in Connecticut. She did not provide any additional details about his illness.
Cort was born Walter Edward Cox on March 29, 1948, in Rye, N.Y. While performing standup in New York City in the late 1960s, he caught the eye of director Robert Altman who cast him in both “M*A*S*H” and “Brewster McCloud” in 1970.
His most notable role came a year later in Hal Ashby’s offbeat comedy “Harold and Maude,” in which he played an awkward, death-obsessed young man who falls in love with the vibrant, 79-year-old Holocaust survivor, Maude, played by Oscar-winning Gordon.
The film’s long road from midnight movie to cult classic culminated in its inclusion on the American Film Institute’s 100 Best Romantic Comedies.
“A young man obsessed with death falls in love with an old woman obsessed with life. She dies and teaches the kid how to live,” Cameron Crowe described the film for AFI, while also noting its Cat Stevens soundtrack. “It’s done with music that scratches at your soul…that movie holds up — to this minute.”
However, the role became “a blessing and a curse,” Cort told the LA Times in 1996, saying he was often typecast as gawky, social outcasts.
“I was typecast to the point where I didn’t make a film for five years,” Cort said. “I fought certain opportunities off because I wasn’t ready to be a brand name. In retrospect, I should have done everything.”
He noted he rejected a stream of “weirdo” roles, including in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which later won five Oscars.
Over the course of Cort’s nearly 50-year acting career, he had memorable supporting turns in 1995’s “Heat,” as an unscrupulous restaurant manager, and Wes Anderson’s 2004 hit “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” as a sensitive bond company stooge.
He also appeared in hits like “Dogma,” “Coyote Ugly” and “Pollock.” He continued acting throughout the 2010s, though he increasingly took on voice roles in animated series and movies such as “Static Shock,” “Justice League Unlimited” and “The Little Prince.”
