Martin Short’s daughter dies by suicide aged 42 in latest tragedy to rock beloved Hollywood star

Martin Short’s daughter, Katherine, has died by suicide at the age of 42.

On Tuesday, representatives for the 75-year-old comedy legend confirmed the devastating news in a statement to the Daily Mail.

‘It is with profound grief that we confirm the passing of Katherine Hartley Short,’ the statement read. ‘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.’

According to authorities, the Los Angeles Police Department responded to Katherine’s Hollywood Hills residence on Monday shortly after 6 p.m.

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Fire Department confirmed to the Daily Mail that crews responded to a call at the address at approximately 6:41 p.m., but declined to identify the individual involved due to privacy concerns.

TMZ reported that Katherine died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Katherine was last seen out publicly with her dad while celebrating her 40th birthday, attended by Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn, Catherine O’Hara, Bo Welch, Joni Mitchell, at the Grand Master Recorders in 2023. 

Katherine was a licensed clinical social worker with a master’s degree from the University of Southern California. 

Short adopted Katherine and her brothers, Oliver and Henry, with his late wife Nancy Dolman, who died in 2010 after a battle with ovarian cancer. 

The couple had been married for 30 years at the time of her death.

Following Dolman’s passing, Short’s longtime comedy partner Steve Martin paid tribute to her with a musical elegy titled The Great Remember (For Nancy), which appeared on one of his albums. 

Nancy, by then his wife of 30 years, passed away after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

At the time, Short’s comedy partner Steve Martin dedicated a musical elegy for Nancy, called The Great Remember (For Nancy) on one of his albums.

Speaking in 2019 about Nancy, Short described his marriage to the actress as a ‘triumph’. He admitted he still ‘talks’ to his late wife all the time and still feels her presence around him.

In an interview with AARP magazine, he said: ‘With real tragedy, you become a little more daring. It’s the yin to the yang: the positive part of life’s dark side.’

He also previously told CBC his attitude to grief is: ‘We go on.’

In his memoir, released in 2014, he described Nancy’s death as ‘by far the most awful thing I’ve been through.’

And as he supported his children through the grief of losing their mother, Short drew from his own experiences.

Speaking to youngest son Henry the night before Nancy died, he told him: ‘This will make you stronger. This will make you more determined.’

As Short and his children continue, 14 years on, to process their grief over Nancy, the actor has previously revealed the George Eliot quote that he holds dear when thinking about her.

‘Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them,’ he told the Hollywood reporter, before adding: ‘We were together for 36 years. I didn’t want to forget Nancy.’

Short, who is originally from Hamilton, Canada, was orphaned at the young age of 20 and has suffered further loss in his adult life, too.

Despite experiencing more grief than many have in a lifetime by adolescence, Short has recently insisted he isn’t ‘screwed up’ by the tragedy that beset his earlier years; instead arguing it made him stronger.

Short was born in March 1950 as the youngest of five children to Irish and English immigrants Olive Grace and Charles Patrick Short in the Canadian province of Ontario.

Speaking about his childhood with four older siblings in conversation with the Guardian, Short said being the youngest was ‘the greatest position in the world’ because people fawned over him – and joked it was impossible for him to have had low self esteem growing up.

He had three brothers, David, Michael and Brian, and a sister, Nora. However, in 1962 when Short was just 12 years old, David, the oldest brother, died in a car accident in Montreal.

Speaking when his memoir was published in 2014, he discussed writing about his brother’s death.

‘What you don’t know when you start is how open you’re going to be: what you’re going to tell, what you’re not going to tell, what you feel comfortable telling,’ he told CBC News.

He added that writing the memoir wasn’t necessarily the ‘cathartic’ experience people may assume it might be.

Six years after David’s sudden death, Martin also lost his mother Olive, who had been battling cancer for several years. He was 17 years old at the time.

Two years later, his father died following complications from a stroke.

Despite being orphaned and having lost a sibling before he reached 20 years old, Short has long insisted the tragedy he endured in his younger years shaped him as he learnt to live with his grief.

‘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,’ he told the Hollywood Reporter last month.

‘The only thing I can think of is that these kind of life stresses either empower you or defeat you.’

He added the losses had helped him develop ‘muscles’ to deal with more challenging things later in life.

‘I do think, in a weird way, it did make me braver as a performer, braver onstage’ and explained he had fewer inhibitions when performing as a young and rising star because he didn’t care what others thought of him,’ he said.

And his outlook appears to have paid off. 

During his career, Short has triumphed on stage and screen; and most recently has teamed up with his comedy partner Steve Martin to dazzle audiences with Only Murders in the Building; one of the biggest hits on the Disney Plus streaming platform.

In 1972, Short met Dolman, a fellow actress, and the pair were married by 1980.

Five years after the couple tied the knot, Nancy retired from showbusiness to become a stay-at-home mother.