Martin Short Breaks Silence on Daughter Katherine’s Death

Martin Short has broken his silence. Less than three months after the death of his daughter Katherine, the beloved comedian sat down with CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Tracy Smith for his first interview on the loss — and he didn’t hold back.

“It’s been a nightmare for the family,” Short told CBS. “But the understanding that mental health and cancer, like my wife, are both diseases — and sometimes with diseases, they are terminal. And 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.”

Katherine Hartley Short, 76-year-old Martin’s eldest child, was found dead at her Hollywood Hills home on February 23 at the age of 42. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner confirmed her manner of death as suicide. LAPD officers had responded to the scene around 6:43 p.m. after a radio call about a possible suicide attempt. A note was found nearby.

In the days after Katherine’s death, Martin’s representative released a statement: “It is with profound grief that we confirm the passing of Katherine Hartley Short. The Short family is devastated by this loss and asks for privacy at this time. Katherine was beloved by all and will be remembered for the light and joy she brought into the world.”

Until now, that statement was all Martin had offered publicly. The CBS interview, timed to the release of his Netflix documentary Marty, Life Is Short, marks the first time he’s spoken about Katherine directly.

“Dad, Let Me Go”

The most gut-wrenching moment of the interview came when Short drew a direct line between the two greatest losses of his adult life — his wife and his daughter.

“Nan’s last words to me were, ‘Martin, let me go,’” he said, referring to his wife Nancy Dolman, who died of ovarian cancer in 2010 after 30 years of marriage. “And what Katherine was just saying was, ‘Dad, let me go.’”

It’s a devastating parallel — a father twice asked to release someone he loved, by the disease that was taking them. Short described Katherine’s death not as something that came out of nowhere, but as the end of a long, painful fight. She had lived with borderline personality disorder and other serious mental health conditions for years, and she had dedicated her professional life to helping others facing similar struggles. Katherine was a licensed clinical social worker in Los Angeles who held a bachelor’s degree in psychology from NYU and a master’s in social work from USC. She worked at UCLA’s Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital and later in community outreach and psychotherapy, and she volunteered with Bring Change 2 Mind, a nonprofit focused on reducing the stigma around mental illness.

A neighbor who had lived near Katherine for more than a decade told Us Weekly that she “showed no indication of struggle” before her death. “Depression is often a silent and hidden killer,” the neighbor said, describing Katherine as friendly, outgoing, and a voracious reader who loved talking about books and kept “the nicest, most beautiful orange tree” in her front yard.

In 2012, Katherine had legally dropped the “Short” surname, filing under the name Katherine Elizabeth Hartley. She cited concerns that her famous father’s name could lead to harassment from future therapy patients — a decision that reflected just how seriously she took her work and her independence from the spotlight.

A Year of Staggering Loss

Katherine’s death didn’t arrive in isolation. Short told CBS that the past several months have brought a wave of loss that defies comprehension.

“If I wasn’t going to talk about this, then I would have pushed the documentary, because it is — listen, it’s called Marty, Life Is Short,” he said. “And suddenly, last October, I lost Diane Keaton on the same day I lost my sister-in-law, Nancy’s sister, to cancer. Then Rob and Michelle Reiner — my lifelong friends for 40 years. And then Catherine O’Hara and then my daughter. It’s been four months. Staggering.”

When asked how anyone processes that volume of grief, Short was disarmingly simple: “You can’t. You just have to breathe in, breathe out.”

He also revealed that he’s never been in therapy. Instead, he has his own method: “What I do is I dictate into my phone and then I transcribe it and look at it and rewrite it and put it away. You find if you’re repeating the same things, maybe you’re moving on a little bit.”

And even amid all of this, there was a moment he shared from the chaos of the Pacific Palisades fire — his own home survived, but his son’s was destroyed. As he was driving away that day, he said, he found himself wondering why he was still pushing forward at 75. Then he arrived at his destination and two grandsons, ages four and five, came running: “‘Papa! Let’s play giant!’ And suddenly you go, ‘Oh, that’s why. That’s why. Okay.’”

Grief Has Been His Lifelong Teacher

What makes Short’s composure in this interview so striking is the context behind it. Loss is not new to him. When he was 12, his older brother David — “the star of the family,” as Short described him at a May 7 panel at the Netflix Is a Joke festival alongside David Letterman and Paul Shaffer — died in a car accident. His mother was diagnosed with cancer at David’s funeral and died three years later. His father died the year after that. By the time Martin Short was 20, he had lost everyone in his immediate family.

“My older brother David died first. He was the star of the family,” Short told the Letterman panel. “Then my mother was diagnosed with cancer at his funeral and died three years later. My father died the year after that. So there was definitely a period where life changed completely.”

Yet even decades ago, Short resisted the label of tragedy. “There isn’t a period of my life that I don’t like to think about or wouldn’t go back to,” he told People more than 40 years ago. “It sounds like a tragic family, but it really isn’t… You learn some sense of priorities.”

That same perspective runs through his new Netflix documentary, directed by his longtime friend Lawrence Kasdan. In the film, when Ron Howard asks him about loss, Short replies: “What it developed in me was this muscle of survival and handling grief and a perspective on it.” He also credits his early hardships with giving him the confidence to perform: “If you’ve gone through that, an audience not liking you is really not that important anymore.”

Moving Forward, With Purpose

Short made his first public appearance since Katherine’s death on May 6, at the Hollywood premiere of Marty, Life Is Short during the Netflix Is a Joke Festival. His sons Oliver and Henry were at his side on the carpet, joined by their wives, with Selena Gomez, Kate Hudson, Billy Crystal, and Eugene Levy among the famous friends who came out in support.

In the CBS interview, he was clear about one thing he hopes Katherine’s story can do: move the conversation on mental health forward. He said he wants to help take “mental health out of the shadows” so people aren’t “ashamed” of talking about it — “not hiding from the word suicide, but accepting that this can be the last stage of an illness.”

There is life ahead for him, too. Another season of Only Murders in the Building is set to film, and Short has plans — tentative, but real — to return to Broadway alongside his close friend and now-girlfriend Meryl Streep. He even managed a joke about it: “We are trying to figure out something, we’re just not sure if the box office is gonna be there. It’s a gamble — you never know how Meryl is going to do at the box office, but let’s hope.”

He closed the CBS interview with something that felt less like a quote and more like a hard-won truth: “I think we all are in denial about our limited time on this earth. It’s very difficult to accept it. But the more you accept it, I think it does lift you and make you feel that this is a complicated little journey, life. And the more we approach it with wisdom, probably the happier we’ll be.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. Crisis Text Line also provides free, 24/7, confidential support when you text 741741.