Theatre Let Me Escape: Bud Cort, 1948-2026

He gave up McCabe and Mrs. Miller to make Harold and Maude, which if you want my opinion is probably why Altman never cast him again. But it was objectively the correct decision. It’s not just that I’m not a huge fan of Altman. It’s that Warren Beatty was fully capable of taking over as John McCabe, but no one else could have played Harold. It became the role by which Bud Cort would remain defined. He was so perfect at it that I can’t imagine who else would have been cast.

He got his start as a painter, and he seems to have been pretty good at it. But he’d also been acting—he said he played Mr. Darcy in third grade—and couldn’t stop. It was what he wanted to do. I’ve never seen any of his paintings, but he was apparently already making money as a painter—but he was tired of doing portraits, and the stage called. And then Robert Altman saw him, casting him as Private Boone and as Brewster McCloud. And then Hal Ashby cast him as Harold.

He was fixed to have one of those careers that only seems to have happened in the ‘60s and ‘70s, where people did lots of weird movies that shouldn’t have been successful but were anyway and somehow became pop culture icons. He befriended Groucho Marx, although Groucho did apparently close the door in his face the first time because he was afraid Cort was Charles Manson. He was in the last movie Roger Corman directed for American International Pictures. And then he was in a car accident that among other things severely injured his face, cutting that stage of his career short.

He never stopped acting, though. Among other things, he was in the Faerie Tale Theatre episode “The Nightingale,” with Mick Jagger as a Chinese emperor. He was in the deeply awful movie adaptation of The Chocolate War. He did an episode of Batman: The Animated Series and played Toyman across three other DCAU shows. He was in But I’m a Cheerleader and Dogma and The Life Aquatic. He even played himself on an episode of Arrested Development. No Warren Beatty, possibly, but still interesting.

My sister’s first boyfriend was a film buff, and it was he who showed me Harold and Maude. We’ve long since fallen out, for various reasons, but I’m grateful for the movies. I would’ve seen the movie sooner or later—I actually watched it in sophomore English class, and not the one taught by the film buff—but still. Just because I would have seen it eventually doesn’t mean I don’t have gratitude for that moment. Watching it in English class wouldn’t have been the ideal first viewing experience anyway.