• Meryl Streep and Martin Short were photographed at an intimate London dinner, sitting side by side and leaning into each other.
• A fan who was seated nearby described their interaction as “full of laughs and tender gestures.”
• The sighting comes just days after a source claimed the couple’s connection had been strained following the death of Short’s daughter Katherine in February.
• Both stars are in London filming Only Murders in the Building Season 6, the show’s first season shot outside the U.S.
• Reps have long denied they’re a couple, but the evidence — and the fans — keep piling up.

Whatever the tabloids were saying about Meryl Streep and Martin Short, a candid photo from a London restaurant this weekend told a very different story.

A fan who stumbled into the same dining room as the pair on Sunday, May 17, posted a photo to X that immediately set the internet on fire. In it, Streep and Short — both 76 — are seated on the same side of the table, shoulders touching, both peering at something on her phone. Streep has her head tilted toward Short’s chest. It’s the kind of picture that doesn’t need a caption.

“Spending a few days in London, choosing a restaurant at random and ending up eating just a few meters from Meryl Streep and her husband,” the fan wrote on X — mistakenly calling Short Streep’s husband (Streep is single following her 2023 separation from Don Gummer, and Short has been a widower since his wife Nancy Dolman passed away in 2010). When someone asked if she’d gone over to say hello or snag a selfie, the fan shut that down immediately.

“No. They were having a great time. Full of laughs and tender gestures,” she wrote in a follow-up post. “No desire to impose myself in the middle of that.”

Honestly? Respect.

A Sighting That Comes at a Significant Moment

The timing of the photo matters. Just days before it surfaced, a source told RadarOnline.com that Short and Streep’s relationship had been under strain in the aftermath of a devastating loss — Short’s daughter Katherine died by suicide in February at age 42. “[Meryl] loves Martin unconditionally, and it’s just devastating to see him so broken,” the insider said. “They have never referred to each other as ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’ per se, but they have been incredibly close.” The source added that “the hope is that once things start to calm down, they can find a way to reconnect.”

That London photo suggests the reconnection may already be underway.

Short has spoken publicly about Katherine’s death with remarkable openness. On a May episode of CBS News Sunday Morning, he drew a direct parallel to the loss of his wife. “Mental health and cancer, like my wife had, are both diseases,” he said. “Sometimes with diseases, they are terminal. 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.” He’s since become an advocate for mental health awareness through the organization Bring Change to Mind, calling for people to stop hiding from the word “suicide” and treat it as what it is — the possible final stage of an illness.

It’s been an unimaginable stretch of grief. And seeing him out, laughing, leaning close to someone who clearly cares about him — it means something.

The Romance That Dares Not Speak Its Name

The Streep-Short will-they-won’t-they has been one of pop culture’s most beloved slow burns. It started heating up in January 2024 when they sat together at the Golden Globes — a moment that famously caught Selena Gomez’s attention and set off a thousand memes. A rep quickly issued the standard denial: “They are just very good friends, nothing more.” Short himself doubled down on the Club Random podcast that same month: “We’re not a couple. We are just very close friends.”

Then came the hand-holding at the Only Murders in the Building Season 4 premiere party in August 2024. Then repeat dinners at Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica. Then a backstage photo at Tom Hanks’ play This World of Tomorrow, the two of them tucked in alongside Steve Martin and Anne Stringfield, Hanks and Rita Wilson. Then Amy Schumer, never one to stay quiet, told People in February 2025 after spotting them at SNL’s 50th anniversary: “I think that the tea is, I think Marty might be off the market. That’s what I’m seeing.”

Short has also been openly smitten in interviews — just never quite in the way that would make it official. During a June 2025 appearance on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, he admitted that working with Streep made him nervous in a way he hadn’t felt in years. “I remember the first day working with Meryl and driving to the studio and thinking, ‘I’m nervous today,'” he said. “I [hadn’t] been nervous going to the set for a long time.”

He went on to describe their very first scene together on Only Murders — a flirtatious piano moment — and how Streep, sensing his nerves, simply said in the holding area: “OK, nerves to half.” Short’s response: “Wait a second, I was nervous. You can’t be nervous.”

On the show, their characters got married. In real life, they keep showing up together in cities around the world. You do the math.

Season 6 Takes the Gang to London

There’s also a practical reason the two are in the same city right now. Only Murders in the Building is currently shooting its sixth season in London — the first time the Netflix series has filmed outside the United States. Steve Martin has been posting cheerful tourist content from the city, including shots at Trafalgar Square and a gift shop selling “London” beanies. The whole gang is there.

Streep joined the show as Loretta Durkin in Season 3, and she’s been a recurring presence since. Last month, she and Short reportedly floated the idea of a Broadway return together — which, if it happens, would give fans even more reason to obsess over their chemistry.

For now, their reps aren’t saying anything new. But a fan who randomly picked a London restaurant and ended up two tables away from Meryl Streep and Martin Short, watching them laugh and lean into each other all night, already said everything that needed to be said.

The post Meryl Streep & Martin Short’s London Date Has Fans Swooning appeared first on Cream.

• Lawrence Kasdan’s documentary Marty, Life Is Short is now streaming on Netflix
• The film covers Martin Short’s decades-long career alongside deeply personal stories about love and loss
• It features interviews with Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Eugene Levy, and the late Catherine O’Hara, to whom the film is dedicated
• Short’s wife Nancy Dolman, who died in 2010, is central to the documentary’s emotional core
• The Hollywood screening drew Selena Gomez, Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, Kate Hudson, and more

Martin Short has spent roughly 40 years making people laugh, and Marty, Life Is Short — Lawrence Kasdan’s warm, funny, and quietly devastating new documentary — makes a compelling case that he’s never really stopped. The film, now streaming on Netflix, is the kind of portrait that earns its emotion honestly: it doesn’t manufacture tears, it just follows a man who has lived a lot of life and kept showing up anyway.

“Let’s say you’re going to host a dinner party and you invite Marty,” Steve Martin tells viewers early on. “Then it turns out Marty can’t come? You cancel the party.” It’s a line that gets a laugh, but it also sets the tone for everything that follows — a film about someone so fundamentally committed to joy that the people around him have organized their lives around it.

A Life That Earns Its Title

Kasdan — the writer of Raiders of the Lost Ark and director of The Big Chill — is not an objective observer here. He and Short have been close friends for decades, a relationship that dates back to the 1999 dark comedy Mumford, and the two have had, by Short’s own count, “thousands of lunches.” The film opens with Short joking that he’s worried the whole thing will be a hatchet job he’ll refuse to promote. It is not a hatchet job.

What it is, at 101 minutes, is a generous and clear-eyed look at a career that Short himself describes as “80 percent failure” — a number he later revises upward to 90, and which collaborator John Mulaney quotes as 98. The math is grim, but the spirit isn’t. Films like Captain Ron, Pure Luck, and the legendarily strange Clifford — in which Short played a 10-year-old boy, prompting Roger Ebert to write that “it’s not bad in any usual way; it’s bad in a new way all its own” — are accounted for honestly. The documentary even includes on-set footage from Captain Ron that makes the point plainly: a movie can be a critical and commercial disaster and still be a genuinely fun experience to make.

But what’s more interesting than the flops is how Short processed them. His mantra, repeated throughout the film in various forms, is essentially: keep moving. “98 percent of it is failure; nothing works and then something works.” It’s a philosophy he didn’t arrive at by accident.

Short grew up as the youngest of five children in Hamilton, Ontario, where, as he puts it, “I profited from trickle-down comedy” — the family’s currency was making each other laugh. Then, when he was 12, his eldest brother David was killed in a car accident. His mother Olive, the concertmistress of the Hamilton Symphony Orchestra, died of cancer when Short was 18. His father Charles died two years after that. By the time he was 20, both parents were gone. Short describes the choice that period forced on him: collapse and “become defeated forever,” or “learn that life is short and have a glass of wine and fun.”

He chose the wine.

Where It All Started

The documentary traces Short’s path from pre-med student to social work graduate to, eventually, one of the most distinctive comic performers of his generation. The turning point was a now-legendary 1972 Toronto production of Godspell — a cast so stacked it will reportedly be the subject of its own upcoming documentary — that featured Short alongside Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Gilda Radner, and Victor Garber. From there came Second City Toronto, then SCTV, then a stint on Saturday Night Live in the mid-’80s, and then Hollywood.

The SCTV alumni are among the film’s most valuable voices. Levy and Andrea Martin offer anecdotes going back to college. And then there is Catherine O’Hara — who appears throughout the documentary in interviews and archival footage, and to whom the film is dedicated. Seeing O’Hara so soon after her death is genuinely hard. She is radiant and funny and warm in every frame, a reminder of everything that made her so beloved, and her presence in the film carries a particular weight that Kasdan doesn’t try to soften.

The film is also dedicated to Short’s daughter Katherine, who passed away earlier this year. Her death is not discussed in the documentary — nor is O’Hara’s. Kasdan made a deliberate choice to keep the film’s grief largely offscreen, which is either a limitation or an act of mercy depending on how you look at it. What it means in practice is that the closing title cards — coming immediately after a bit where Short’s alter ego Jiminy Glick dismisses the very idea of a Martin Short documentary — land like a gut punch. The whiplash is the point.

The Home Movies Are Everything

If there’s a single element that elevates Marty, Life Is Short above the crowded field of recent comedy-legend docs — and it is crowded, with films on Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy, Gene Wilder, and Lorne Michaels all arriving in recent years — it’s the home footage. Short has been filming his life for decades, and what’s captured on those tapes is extraordinary.

There are the raucous holiday parties at Short’s Pacific Palisades home, where guests like Sally Field climb pianos and Andrea Martin jokes about hiring a vocal coach to perform for the occasion. There are summers at the Short family’s lake cottage in Ontario — the Malibu of the North, as it’s been called — where Tom Hanks and Short reenact the final jump scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid while Steven Spielberg mans the camcorder. There’s Goldie Hawn blowing kisses at the lens while Kurt Russell looks amused behind her. There’s Short narrating a storm rolling in off the lake, or flirting with his wife Nancy in the kitchen, or just playing with his kids on the deck.

Nancy Dolman is the film’s emotional center. She and Short met during that 1972 Godspell production and were married for 30 years until her death in 2010. Everyone Kasdan interviews describes them as the perfect couple. The documentary leans into that, treating the marriage less as a tragedy to be mourned and more as a love story to be celebrated — closer in spirit to Judd Apatow’s recent treatment of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft than to a conventional grief narrative. It works.

“Marty operates at the speed of joy,” Tom Hanks says at the film’s end. “Marty is doing it because the opportunity is there to have a blast.”

Why Some People Can’t Stand Him (And Why That’s Part of the Point)

One of the more honest things Marty, Life Is Short does is acknowledge, head-on, that Martin Short is not universally beloved. A 2023 Slate piece by Dan Kois examined Short’s “manic, slightly creepy intensity” and prompted fierce pushback from both fans and fellow celebrities. The documentary doesn’t pretend that criticism doesn’t exist.

Short’s comedy — built around characters like the perpetually gelled manchild Ed Grimley and the obnoxious entertainment journalist Jiminy Glick, who appeared in a fat suit and thick glasses — has always been maximalist. “I always figured that if you walked on stage and you looked totally insane, you’d get a laugh,” Short says, “and then you were halfway there.” That approach works brilliantly or it doesn’t land at all, and Short has always known it. “It’s actually quite hard to make a completely bizarre character real,” Steve Martin says. “And that’s what he does.”

The film closes with Glick himself weighing in on the documentary’s subject. “I don’t really find him very interesting,” Glick says of Short. “I find people who push too hard and are desperate for the approval without really presenting any reason for the approval — I find it offensive.” Then: “There’s basically three voices, two hairstyles, and four dance moves. And you can’t build an empire on that.”

It’s the biggest joke in the movie. And it’s also, somehow, a kind of answer.

The Screening Was Its Own Event

The Hollywood premiere of Marty, Life Is Short was about as Martin Short as a Martin Short documentary screening could be. The guest list included Short’s Godspell co-stars Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin, his Only Murders in the Building co-star Selena Gomez, and a constellation of famous friends: Jimmy Kimmel, Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, Kate Hudson, Paul Shaffer, and Brian Grazer, who served as executive producer.

Gomez, who plays Mabel alongside Short’s Oliver Putnam and Steve Martin’s Charles-Haden Savage on the Hulu hit, posted her reaction after seeing the film. “This man who doesn’t have social media is truly outstandingly witty, smart and has given the most wonderful attributes to our world of comedy,” she wrote on Instagram. “Martin Short is nothing short of a legend. His outlook on life is simply joyful… thank you Marty for your inspiring and tremendous heart that makes me forever happy.”

Short, for his part, has been busy. During a recent appearance on CBS Sunday Morning, he teased that he and Only Murders co-star Meryl Streep are developing a Broadway show together — which, if it happens, would add yet another chapter to a career that has already included a Tony Award for Little Me, the stage version of The Producers, Hairspray Live!, and the musical series Schmigadoon!

Marty, Life Is Short is not a complete picture of Martin Short’s life — it can’t be, and Kasdan doesn’t pretend otherwise. But it is a deeply felt one, made by a friend who wanted to capture something true about a man who has chosen, over and over, to meet the world with laughter. Whether that makes you want to cancel the dinner party or just buy a ticket to the show probably says something about you. Either way, the documentary makes its case warmly and well.

The post Martin Short’s Netflix Doc Is a Joyful, Bittersweet Ride appeared first on Cream.

• Netflix’s Marty, Life Is Short is directed by Lawrence Kasdan and now streaming
• Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, Eugene Levy, and the late Catherine O’Hara all appear in the film
• The documentary covers Short’s decades of personal tragedy alongside his remarkable career
• Short estimates 80–98% of his career has been commercial failure — and doesn’t seem to mind
• The film ends with dedications to both O’Hara and Short’s daughter Katherine, who died earlier this year

The new Netflix documentary about Martin Short opens at a Boxing Day party in early-1990s California — a British Commonwealth holiday being celebrated in Hollywood, which feels exactly right for a man who has always seemed slightly out of place in the industry he’s conquered. Tom Hanks is there. Steve Martin. Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, fellow Canadians. The footage is warm and crackling and slightly chaotic, and it tells you everything you need to know about what Marty, Life Is Short is going to be.

The documentary, directed by Short’s longtime friend Lawrence Kasdan — the man behind The Big Chill and Raiders of the Lost Ark — began streaming Tuesday. At 101 minutes, it’s less a rigorous career retrospective than an affectionate portrait of a man who has turned the act of having a good time into something close to a life philosophy. And in doing so, it quietly answers the question that’s dogged Short for decades: why does he provoke such strong reactions, in both directions?

“Let’s say you’re going to host a dinner party and you invite Marty,” Steve Martin tells the camera, “then it turns out Marty can’t come? You cancel the party.”

The Case For (and Against) Martin Short

Short, now 76, has never been easy to categorize. He can’t do Eugene Levy’s understated deadpan. He can’t play it straight the way Catherine O’Hara could. He is — and this is both his gift and his problem — a lot. His comedy doesn’t ease its way in; it announces itself. Ed Grimley, the manchild with the gelled cone of hair. Jiminy Glick, the obnoxious entertainment journalist buried under latex and a fat suit. Characters so committed to their own bizarre logic that they either make you laugh immediately or make you want to leave the room.

A 2023 Slate piece by Dan Kois put words to what Short’s detractors have always felt — that his “manic, slightly creepy intensity” tips over into desperation, that the approval-seeking overwhelms the actual comedy. It prompted fierce pushback from fans and fellow celebrities alike. The documentary engages with that criticism directly, and it’s Jiminy Glick himself who delivers the sharpest response, appearing in character near the film’s end: “I don’t really find him very interesting. I find people who push too hard and are desperate for the approval without really presenting any reason for the approval — I find it offensive.”

“There’s basically three voices, two hairstyles, and four dance moves,” Glick adds. “And you can’t build an empire on that.”

It’s a genuinely clever move — using the most polarizing version of himself to disarm the criticism with the one weapon Short has always had: the joke.

Short is clear-eyed about his record. “I would say my career has been 80 percent failure,” he says at one point, later revising that upward to 90. John Mulaney, also appearing in the film, quotes Short’s own “98 percent” figure back at him. The flops are real: Pure Luck, Three Fugitives, Captain Ron, and the legendarily strange Clifford, in which Short played a 10-year-old boy and which Roger Ebert memorably described as “not bad in any usual way. It’s bad in a new way all its own.” Short calls himself “the cheap Amigo” from the 1986 film he made with Martin and Chevy Chase, and he says it with zero apparent bitterness.

The mantra he’s built around all of it: “98 percent of it is failure; nothing works and then something works.” And right now, something is very much working — Only Murders in the Building has made Short more beloved than ever, and his live comedy shows are selling out across the country.

A Life Built Around Loss

The documentary’s emotional weight comes from somewhere most viewers may not fully know about. Short grew up in Ontario as the youngest of five children in a family where making each other laugh was practically a competitive sport. “I profited from trickle-down comedy,” he says. But when Short was 12, his eldest brother David was killed in a car accident. A camp counselor delivered the news bluntly: “Your brother’s been in an accident and it killed him.” Short’s response, as he recalls it, was simply: “Is he OK?”

His mother died of cancer when he was 17. His father died roughly two years later from complications of a stroke. By 20, Short had lost his brother and both parents. He describes the aftermath as a choice: collapse and “become defeated forever,” or “learn that life is short and have a glass of wine and fun.”

He chose the wine.

The film also charts the love story at the center of his adult life — his marriage to Nancy Dolman, whom he met during a now-legendary 1972 Toronto production of Godspell that also starred Levy, Andrea Martin, Gilda Radner, and Victor Garber. (That production is apparently getting its own documentary, which, fair enough.) Short and Nancy were married in 1980. When they discovered they couldn’t have biological children — Nancy had endometriosis and the medications affected her badly — Short told her: “You have to stop those drugs, and we’re going to adopt a baby.” They adopted three: Katherine, Oliver, and Henry.

Nancy was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007. She died in 2010 at 58. The film handles her illness and death with real grace. Eugene Levy says that at a certain point, “we kind of knew it wasn’t going to work out.” Tom Hanks remembers the family’s attitude: “You’re not going to stop doing work because this malady is going to do its damage.” Andrea Martin says Nancy “wanted to keep going until she couldn’t,” and that Short “was a perfect partner because he let her. It was extraordinary to watch.”

Catherine O’Hara — who appears throughout the documentary and to whom the film is dedicated following her death in January — shared something quietly remarkable about Short and Nancy’s marriage. O’Hara revealed she was going through a rough patch with her own husband, production designer Bo Welch, and the two went to couples therapy. When the therapist asked them to name a couple whose relationship they’d want to emulate, they both immediately said Martin and Nancy. The therapist’s response: “I can’t tell you how many people have named them when I’ve asked this question.”

After Nancy’s death, Short coped the only way he knows how: he kept working. His son Oliver puts it simply in the film: “I don’t know what he would do if he wasn’t on the move.”

The Documentary Kasdan Wanted to Make

Kasdan’s approach here is worth noting, especially given the recent wave of comedy-icon docs — Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy, Gene Wilder, Mary Tyler Moore, Albert Brooks, and even Lorne Michaels. Kasdan isn’t making a career retrospective. He’s making something closer to a portrait of a friendship, and a philosophy.

Short jokes at the film’s opening that he’s worried Kasdan will make a hatchet job he’ll refuse to promote. But he’s also clearly delighted by the whole process — and not shy about poking fun at it. When Kasdan films him sipping coffee for B-roll, Short looks up and says, “We’re staging a breakfast I’ve already eaten,” then proceeds to take exaggerated bites of eggs and bacon. “Mmm! That’s so good!”

The home movie footage Kasdan has assembled is genuinely extraordinary — Short cavorting with Goldie Hawn and Sally Field, Steven Spielberg and Rita Wilson, at Christmas parties and summers at the Short family cabin in Ontario. There’s one clip where Short and Hanks recreate the final scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with Spielberg behind the camcorder. These aren’t staged celebrity moments. They’re just people who really like each other, and Short is always at the center of it, making it happen.

“Marty operates at the speed of joy,” Hanks says.

The film doesn’t address Short’s rumored romance with Meryl Streep, and it doesn’t cover the death of his daughter Katherine, who died by suicide in February at 42. Short has spoken about it publicly since — telling CBS Sunday Morning, “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.” But the documentary was already complete, and Kasdan closes instead with title cards: dedications to O’Hara and to Katherine. The whiplash of Glick’s jokes giving way to those two names is, quietly, the most affecting moment in the film.

“Marty is busier and more in demand now than he has ever been,” Hanks says near the end. “That is not coming out of a desire to stay on top or to fill his coffers or to stay relevant. Marty is doing it because the opportunity is there to have a blast.”

For a man who has lost as much as Martin Short has, that’s not a small thing.

The post Martin Short’s Netflix Doc Is a Love Letter to Chaos appeared first on Cream.

• Martin Short spoke publicly for the first time about daughter Katherine’s death by suicide in February, calling it “a nightmare for the family.”
• Katherine Short, 42, was a licensed clinical social worker who battled borderline personality disorder and other mental health conditions.
• Short drew a parallel between his daughter’s death and the loss of his wife Nancy Dolman to ovarian cancer in 2010, saying both were terminal diseases.
• The interview aired on CBS Sunday Morning ahead of his Netflix documentary Marty, Life Is Short, premiering May 12.
• Short has lost his brother, both parents, his wife, longtime friends, and now his daughter — all of it shaping a life he describes as defined by grief and resilience.

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.

The post Martin Short Breaks Silence on Daughter Katherine’s Death appeared first on Cream.

• Martin Short’s new Netflix documentary Marty: Life Is Short is out now, directed by Lawrence Kasdan
• Short lost his brother at 12, both parents before 21, his wife Nancy to ovarian cancer in 2010, and daughter Katherine to suicide in February 2025
• The film is dedicated to Katherine and to Second City legend Catherine O’Hara, who died in January
• Short’s son Oliver lost his home in the LA wildfires; Short’s Pacific Palisades house was spared
• A possible Broadway collaboration with Meryl Streep is in the works, plus a new season of Only Murders in the Building

Tom Hanks once said that Martin Short “operates at the speed of joy.” Short’s response, characteristically, was to deflect the compliment with a grin: “If that’s his review for me, I’ll accept it.” But after learning everything Short has quietly carried through five decades of one of comedy’s most beloved careers, the description lands differently. It doesn’t just feel like a compliment. It feels like a survival strategy.

Marty: Life Is Short, a new Netflix documentary out now, is directed by Hollywood legend Lawrence Kasdan — a close family friend who had to do some convincing to get Short in front of the camera at all. “It was not a natural instinct of his to want it; he’s not like that,” Kasdan said. “I had to sell him on it. I had to lie to him, tell him how much I loved him and I would never hurt him.” The result is something genuinely rare: a film that is, as Short himself might put it, hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time.

Kasdan weaves in hours of home movies alongside appearances from Short’s famous inner circle — Hanks, Kurt Russell, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard. But for all the warmth and laughter on screen, the film doesn’t look away from the losses that have quietly defined this man’s life.

A Childhood That Taught Him How to Grieve

Short was the youngest of five children. He was 12 years old when his older brother was killed in a car accident. He was still a teenager when both of his parents died — gone before he turned 21. By the time he was old enough to drink, he had already buried three members of his immediate family.

At a Netflix event in Los Angeles hosted by David Letterman, Letterman reflected on watching Short’s story unfold on screen: “One thing that struck me was your childhood.” Short, now 76, has had a long time to sit with what that kind of early loss does to a person. “What it developed in me was this muscle of survival and handling grief and a perspective on it,” he told CBS News. And strangely, he says, it also freed him as a performer. “I think if you’ve gone through that, an audience not liking you is really not that important anymore.”

That fearlessness brought him to Toronto’s Second City in 1977, where he trained alongside legends-in-the-making: Eugene Levy, John Candy, and Catherine O’Hara. O’Hara, who died in January, is one of two people the documentary is dedicated to. Short’s tribute to her is tender and specific. “There was no one more brilliant. There was no one sweeter. And there was no one funnier. And she, more than anyone on ‘SCTV,’ would sit behind the camera and give you suggestions. ‘Marty, try that.’ ‘Oh, okay.’ And then you always just did it.”

His first professional job, incidentally, was the original Toronto production of Godspell — alongside a young Gilda Radner. Even the early chapters of his career read like a who’s who of comedy royalty.

Nancy, Katherine, and the Losses That Don’t Stop

The film’s emotional center is the life Short built with his wife Nancy Dolman, whom he met during his Toronto days and married in 1980. They were together for 30 years before she died of ovarian cancer in 2010. “She was funny. She had lots of edge,” Short said. “It was an equal ping pong match.” He smiled recalling how even Hanks would walk up to Nancy and ask, “Aren’t you tired of laughing at his jokes?”

During Nancy’s final months, Short continued to work — partly because she wanted him to. He was shooting the legal thriller Damages, and no one on set knew what was happening at home. “Glenn [Close] would go, ‘Marty’s here, yay!!'” he remembered. “And I’d go, ‘Okay. Let me just go to the dressing room for a second. … Okay, then.'” He’s honest that it wasn’t exactly therapeutic. “I don’t know if it helped. It didn’t help, but you had to do it. People have to do things in difficult times. And the mark of the man is: Can you do it?”

Nancy’s final words to him, he says, were: “Martin, let me go.”

The film’s second dedication is to their daughter Katherine, a social worker who died by suicide this past February at 42. Short speaks about her death with a directness that feels both painful and purposeful. “It’s been a nightmare for the family,” he said. “But the understanding is that mental health and cancer, like my wife’s, 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.”

He connects the two losses with a quiet devastation: “So, Nan’s last words to me were, ‘Martin, let me go.’ And what she was just saying was, ‘Dad, let me go.'”

Still Finding Reasons to Keep Going

Short has lived in Pacific Palisades since November 1987 — a house he bought on the strength of two movie deals, one of which collapsed the moment he signed the mortgage. He laughed telling the story: Nancy’s response at the time was simply, “Then we’d move?” His home survived last year’s devastating LA wildfires. His son Oliver’s did not. Oliver and his wife are currently staying in Newport Beach while they figure out next steps.

Short described a moment of raw honesty that happened on the drive to visit them. “I was thinking, ‘Okay. I’m 75. Why am I continuing? Like, really why? I’m not gonna crash my car, but why? What is the point of this?'” And then he arrived, and Oliver’s two little boys — ages five and four — came running. “‘Papa! Let’s play giant!’ And suddenly you go, ‘Oh, that’s why. That’s why. Okay.'”

In the documentary, Ron Howard asks him directly: “Why do you continue to push yourself?” Short’s answer, delivered with his trademark comic timing, is also completely sincere: “I just think it’s important, if you’re ‘gifted,’ to share that gift, of course, with people!”

There’s plenty ahead to push toward. A new season of Only Murders in the Building shoots soon. And Short casually dropped that he and Meryl Streep are working on something for Broadway — though he’s playing coy on details. “We are trying to figure out something; we’re just not sure if the box office would be there,” he deadpanned. “It’s a gamble. You never know how Meryl’s gonna do at the box office, but let’s hope!”

When the darkness has been as heavy as it has for Martin Short — and it has been relentlessly, unfairly heavy — “heading for the light” isn’t a platitude. It’s the whole strategy. “You head for the light,” he said simply, when asked how he gets through it. “That’s what you have to do.”

If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or a suicidal crisis, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. You can also chat online at 988lifeline.org.

The post Martin Short Opens Up on Loss, Joy and Life’s Hardest Chapters appeared first on Cream.

• Martin Short made his first red carpet appearance three months after daughter Katherine Short’s death by suicide in February
• He was joined by sons Oliver, 40, and Henry, 36, at the LA premiere of his Netflix documentary Marty, Life Is Short
• The premiere was held at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre, with Selena Gomez, Billy Crystal, Eugene Levy and others in attendance
• The documentary, directed by Oscar nominee Lawrence Kasdan, premieres May 12 on Netflix
• Short has been slowly returning to public life, including a comedy tour with Steve Martin

Martin Short stepped back into the spotlight Wednesday night — and he didn’t do it alone. The comedy legend made his first red carpet appearance since the death of his daughter Katherine, flanked by his two sons at the Los Angeles premiere of his new Netflix documentary, Marty, Life Is Short.

The screening at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre marked a quietly significant moment: Short, 76, dressed sharply in a black suit with a checkered tie, smiling for cameras alongside sons Oliver, 40, and Henry, 36 — both dapper in their own suits — and their wives, Haylen and Elissa Short. Three months after an unimaginable loss, here was the family, together, showing up.

Katherine Short, a social worker and Short’s eldest child, died by suicide at age 42 in February. She was found at her Hollywood Hills home. “It is with profound grief that we confirm the passing of Katherine Hartley Short,” a rep confirmed at the time. “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.”

Katherine had previously opened up about her own mental health journey on a since-deleted professional website, where she wrote about her service dog — named Joni, after Joni Mitchell — who had been helping her navigate her struggles for five years. “Joni is my incredible service dog, who has been assisting me with my own struggles with mental illness for the past 5 years,” she wrote. “She is an absolute sweetheart and just LOVES people, so don’t be surprised if she greets you with a smile, a wagging tail…and maybe even a kiss.”

A Documentary About a Life That Hasn’t Been Easy

The timing of the documentary’s release carries a weight that no one planned for. Marty, Life Is Short, directed by Oscar nominee Lawrence Kasdan, promises “beautiful, intimate, never-before-seen archive” footage chronicling Short’s decades across film, comedy, theater and television — but it also goes deep into the personal. In the trailer, Short jokes to his brother Michael that he “had a speed dial to the funeral parlor,” a line that lands differently now.

Over the years, Short has lost his parents, Olive Hayter and Charles Patrick Short, at a young age. His eldest brother David. His wife Nancy Dolman, who died in 2010 after thirty years of marriage — the woman with whom he adopted all three of his children. And now Katherine.

His longtime friend Andrea Martin, who appears in the documentary, puts it simply in the trailer: “Being a dad — it’s as genuine as his breath.”

The premiere drew a remarkable crowd of people who clearly wanted to be there for him. His Only Murders in the Building co-star Selena Gomez attended with her husband Benny Blanco. Kate Hudson, Billy Crystal, Eugene Levy and Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos were also in the room.

Finding His Way Back

Short has been easing back into public life carefully. His first outing after Katherine’s death came about a month later — a quiet dinner with longtime friend J.J. Abrams in Santa Monica, where he appeared somber in a black blazer and blue button-down. He also postponed two shows on his comedy tour with Steve Martin in the immediate aftermath, but has since returned to the road.

Wednesday night felt different. This wasn’t a quiet dinner. This was a red carpet, cameras, a crowd — and Short standing at the center of it with his sons beside him, smiling.

Marty, Life Is Short premieres May 12 on Netflix.

If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.

The post Martin Short’s First Red Carpet Since Daughter’s Death appeared first on Cream.