Bud Cort

Walter Edward "Bud" Cox was born in Rye, New York, on March 29, 1948, to Joseph, an orchestra leader, and Alma, a publicist for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He had a brother and three sisters. One of his nephews is Peter Berkman of the band Anamanaguchi. Cort began taking acting lessons from William Hickey when he was 14. To avoid confusion with actor Wally Cox, he used his mother's maiden name as his stage surname, although he changed the original spelling of Court after Broadway's Cort Theatre. He attended Iona Preparatory School, where he frequently skipped classes to watch Broadway shows. After graduation, he attempted to attend acting classes at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, but was rejected, as the classes were already full; he applied again with a portfolio of paintings and was instead accepted as a scenic art major.

Cort was discovered in a revue by director Robert Altman, who subsequently cast him in two of his movies in 1970, M*A*S*H and Brewster McCloud. In the latter, he played the title role. Cort went on to his best-known role as the suicide-obsessed Harold in Harold and Maude. Though it was not particularly successful on release, it gained international cult status and is now considered an American classic, ranking Number 69 on the American Film Institute's 100 Best Romantic Comedies. In 1979, Cort nearly died in a car crash on the Hollywood Freeway where he collided with an abandoned car blocking a lane into which he was turning. He broke an arm and a leg and sustained a concussion and a fractured skull. His face was severely lacerated and his lower lip nearly severed. The crash resulted in plastic surgeries, substantial hospital bills, a lost court case, and the disruption of his career. He subsequently returned as a character actor and appeared in a number of film, stage and TV roles: Endgame, Sledge Hammer!, The Chocolate War, The Big Empty, Theodore Rex, Dogma, But I'm a Cheerleader, Pollock, The Twilight Zone, The Secret Diary of Sigmund Freud, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Cort made a guest appearance on the November 8, 2007, episode of Ugly Betty as the priest officiating at Wilhelmina Slater's wedding. In 2010, he guest-starred on Criminal Minds in the episode "Mosley Lane" as the elderly paedophile Roger Roycewood. In 2012, Cort appeared as the artist Gleeko in the Eagleheart episode "Exit Wound the Gift Shop". Cort's voiceover roles include Edgar the computer in the film Electric Dreams; Toyman over the course of various DC Animated Universe series including Superman: The Animated Series, Static Shock, and Justice League Unlimited; and Josiah Wormwood in an episode of the earlier DCAU production Batman: The Animated Series. He can also be heard as The King in the English-language version of the feature film The Little Prince (2015), which premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and won the César Award for Best Animated Film in February 2016. It was made available to American audiences through Netflix in 2016. This proved to be the actors final film role.

Cort was never married and had no children. During the 1970s, he befriended Groucho Marx and lived at the comedian's guesthouse. At the time of his death, he was reported to be working on an autobiography. He died of pneumonia at an assisted living facility in Norwalk, Connecticut, on February 11, 2026, at the age of 77.