Martin Short has spoken publicly for the first time about the death of his daughter Katherine Short, describing the loss as “a nightmare for the family”. Katherine died in February at her home in the Hollywood Hills, aged 42. The County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s office confirmed she died by suicide.
In an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning, the 76-year-old comedian and actor compared his daughter’s death with that of his wife, Nancy Dolman, who died of ovarian cancer in 2010 aged 58. “The understanding [is] that mental health and cancer, like my wife’s, are both diseases, and sometimes with diseases they are terminal,” Short said. “My daughter fought for a long time with extreme mental health, borderline personality disorder, other things, and did the best she could, until she couldn’t.”
Short recalled that his wife’s last words were “Martin, let me go”, adding that his daughter’s message was “Dad, let me go”. He expressed a “deep desire” to take “mental health out of the shadows” so people would not be “ashamed” of discussing it. “Not hiding from the word suicide, but accepting that this can be the last stage of an illness,” he said.
Short also spoke of losing several close friends and family in the past year, including his sister-in-law, his daughter, and friends Diane Keaton, Rob and Michele Reiner and Catherine O’Hara. “It’s staggering,” he said, adding: “You just have to breathe in, breathe out.”
Katherine was the eldest of three children adopted by Short and Dolman. She largely stayed out of the spotlight, though she sometimes attended events with her father. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and gender sexuality studies from New York University in 2006 and a master’s in social work from the University of Southern California in 2010, later working in private practice as a licensed clinical social worker.
Short spoke ahead of the premiere of a new Netflix documentary about his life, Marty, Life Is Short, due on 12 May. The film touches on his early experiences of loss: his older brother David was killed in a car accident when Short was 12, and both parents died while he was a teenager. Short said this led to “this muscle of survival and handling grief”, as well as the bravery to perform: “If you’ve gone through that, an audience not liking you is really not that important any more.”
