Martin Short, 76, On His Daughter’s Death: ‘It’s Been a Nightmare for the Family’

What the actor says about grief may help others carrying the same weight

Donna Freydkin,

AARP

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Published May 11, 2026

martin short wearing a black suit jacket and plaid tie

Martin Short at the Los Angeles premiere of his Netflix documentary “Marty: Life Is Short” on May 6, 2026. The comedian spoke publicly this week for the first time about the death of his daughter Katherine.

Brianna Bryson/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Key takeaways

Short frames his daughter’s suicide as the final stage of a disease, not a choice.
Short has outlived a brother, both parents, his wife and now a daughter.
He doesn’t have an easy solution for dealing with grief: “You head for the light,” he said.

Martin Short has buried a brother, both parents and his wife of 30 years. On Sunday, he talked about losing his daughter. Katherine Short, 42, died by suicide in February. It was the first time he spoke about it publicly.

“It’s been a nightmare for the family,” Short, 76, said on CBS Sunday Morning in an interview that aired on May 10 and was timed to the May 12 premiere of the Netflix documentary Marty, Life Is Short.

Katherine had dealt with mental health challenges for years. “The reality is that my daughter had a severe disease that was mental illness,” he said on NPR in a separate interview that aired on May 11. “Like cancer, some diseases are terminal. And hers was terminal.”

The documentary was finished before Katherine died. The director, Lawrence Kasdan, suggested postponing the release, “because it’s about love, loss and survival,” Short recalled Kasdan saying. Short refused. “My instinct was the opposite,” he told NPR. “I think we proceed. We must figure a way to survive through grief without denying it or without, in any way, undermining its importance.”

martin short and katherine short posing together

Short and his daughter Katherine at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in West Hollywood in 2011.

Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagic/Getty Images

In more than 50 years, Short has rarely stood still. He came up through Toronto’s Second City in 1977 alongside Eugene Levy, John Candy and Catherine O’Hara. He won a Tony Award in 1999 for Little Me. He is currently in production on a sixth season of the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building and told CBS he is exploring a possible Broadway collaboration with Meryl Streep.

His drive may come from knowing how quickly things end. Short drew a direct line between Katherine’s death and the loss of his wife, Nancy Dolman, who died of ovarian cancer in 2010. “The understanding [is] that mental [illness] and cancer, like my wife’s, are both diseases,” he said on CBS.

He spoke of his “deep desire” to take mental health out of the shadows so people can feel more open talking about it. “Not hiding from the word ‘suicide,’ ” he said on CBS, “but accepting that this can be the last stage of an illness.”

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Grief counselors say this kind of framing, while painful to arrive at, can matter enormously for parents who outlive their children. Margaret Albert, a counselor with Duke Hospice Bereavement Services, told AARP that losing a child inverts everything. “When someone loses a child, it’s like going against nature,” Albert said. “We lose our assumptions about how life will operate.”

The depth of that grief, she added, does not diminish with time or with the age of the child. “It doesn’t matter the age of the child. It’s a very deep grief that you carry with you, and it’s tied directly to the hopes you had for that child.”

Short has carried grief most of his life. He lost his father, mother and brother before he turned 20. Those losses, he said on CBS, gave him thicker skin. “What it developed in me was this muscle of survival and handling grief and a perspective on it,” he said. “If you’ve gone through that, an audience not liking you is really not that important anymore.”

Grief Resources

Martin Short is not alone in carrying grief. For parents, partners and caregivers navigating loss, AARP’s Grief, Loss and End of Life guide offers practical advice on coping, finding support groups and adjusting to life after losing someone you love.

He also spoke of a year that has accumulated losses. Beyond Katherine, he lost his sister-in-law, his friend Catherine O’Hara, who died in January 2026 and to whom the documentary is dedicated, and close friends Rob and Michele Reiner. “It’s staggering,” he said on CBS. “You just have to breathe in, breathe out.”

Short described what he does when his sense of loss becomes acute. He does not resolve it or explain it away. “You head toward the light,” he said on CBS.

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The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.

Donna Freydkin has spent 10-plus years interviewing celebrities for major publications, and has written for a variety of outlets such as USA Today, Allure, Yahoo! and CNN covering topics such as films, family and favorite meals.

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