After the death of his daughter aged 42, it has resurfaced how comic Martin Short has endured a series of other personal tragedies – including the deaths of his parents, brother and ex-wife.
Martin Short has endured a series of personal tragedies before the death of his daughter Katherine Hartley Short – including the passings of his parents, brother and ex-wife.
Authorities discovered the actor’s 42-year-old girl Katherine dead from an apparent self-inflicted gun wound inside her home in the Hollywood Hills, California, on Monday (23.02.26) at about 6pm, and the previous tragedies endured by Martin have now resurfaced in the wake of her passing.
A representative for Martin, 75, confirmed Katherine’s death “with profound grief” in a statement to Page Six, saying: “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, a social worker, was the eldest of Martin’s three children, and the actor shares sons Oliver Patrick, 39, and Henry Hayter, 36, with his late wife, Nancy Dolman, to whom he was married for 36 years.
Martin has not spoken publicly about Katherine’s death.
In August 2024, however, he reflected on earlier experiences of loss in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
He said: “At 20, I knew things about life and death and tragedy and loss that none of my friends knew about. I don’t know why this didn’t screw me up. The only thing I can think of is that these kind of life stresses either empower you or defeat you.”
He continued: “But I think that by surviving all that and continuing on, I developed muscles to handle the disappointments in life. And I do think, in a weird way, it did make me braver as a performer, braver onstage.
“I’d try something, and if some people didn’t like it, I didn’t care because I didn’t know them. I was never doing this for the admiration of strangers. I was doing this to make my siblings and my friends laugh.”
Martin’s former wife Nancy died in August 2010 following a years-long battle with ovarian cancer at the aged of 58.
In 2012, Martin told The Guardian about the loss: “We were together for 36 years, but I would have been divorced five times if I hadn’t found the right person.
“I wouldn’t have faked it and played a game just because I didn’t want to be divorced. It’s been a tough two years for my children. This is the thing of life that we live in denial about, that it will ever happen to us or our loved ones, and when it does you gain a little and you suffer a little. There’s no big surprise.”
In an interview with Larry King released later that year, Martin added of Nancy’s illness: “I mean, how does anyone deal with it? She was brave. She, at times, denial fueled her. At times, realism fueled her too.”
He said of his children: “One deals with it more aggressively. Someone else maybe doesn’t talk about it. But, it doesn’t mean that they’re not all grieving.”
In 2014, while promoting his memoir, I Must Say: My Life As a Humble Comedy Legend, on The Meredith Vieira Show, Martin described honouring Nancy’s final wishes.
He said: “So I just followed her wishes. We went up, we had a party with about 30 close friends and family. She was cremated. The kids and I went into a boat, we sprinkled the ashes into the water, and we jumped into the ashes.”
Martin’s brother, David, died in a car accident when Martin was 12.
In his 2012 interview with The Guardian, Martin said he grew up surrounded by “tremendous humor in the house growing up” and “a lot of laughing”.
He added: “Those kinds of situations are horrible but I think that you are either empowered by them or you become a victim of them.”
Martin’s mother, Olive Hayter, died from cancer when he was 17, and his father, Charles Patrick Short, was killed by a stroke two years later.
In 2013, Martin told CNN: “I think that you become empowered in a weird way by loss — at any age — but certainly when you’re young.”
“You can either go into a direction of say being, ‘I am going to be a victim from this. I’m going to be a drunk. I’m going to do drugs. But, you don’t know what I’ve been through.’ Or you become more resilient.”
Martin Short endured series of personal tragedies before death of daughter Katherine
