Bud Cort

Bud Cort will forever be Harold, the morbid rich kid faking suicides until Ruth Gordon's Maude teaches him to actually live. That performance is so specific and strange that it basically defined a whole vein of darkly funny outsider cinema. What I appreciate is that he leaned into being odd rather than chasing leading-man roles, working with Altman early and then becoming a beloved character actor you spot in all sorts of films. 'Harold and Maude' flopped on release and became a cult monument, and Cort's deadpan vulnerability is the reason it still hits people decades later. A genuine cult treasure.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Bud Cort (March 29, 1948, Rye, New York – February 11, 2026) was an American actor, director and screenwriter. He rose to prominence with director Robert Altman in films such as 'M*A*S*H' and 'Brewster McCloud', but is best remembered for the title role of the death-obsessed young man in Hal Ashby's 1971 cult classic 'Harold and Maude'. He remained a working character actor across film and television for decades until his death in 2026.

Name (English)

Bud Cort

Name (Japanese)

バッド・コート

Reading

ばっど・こーと

Born

March 29, 1948 – February 11, 2026

Origin

Rye, New York, United States

Occupation

Film director / Character actor / Stage actor / Film actor / Screenwriter

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aries / Rat

University

Iona College

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud%20Cort
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%90%E3%83%83%E3%83%89%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q39982

Tags

• From New York
• Film director
• Character actor
• Stage actor

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.