Martin Short Opens Up About Daughter's Suicide on CBS
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- Martin Short described his daughter Katherine's February suicide at age 42 as "a nightmare for the family" in his first public comments, speaking on CBS News Sunday Morning.
- Short said Katherine "fought for a long time with extreme mental health, borderline personality disorder, other things," comparing her death to wife Nancy Dolman's 2010 death from ovarian cancer at 58 — and noting both of their last words were versions of "let me go."
- Short expressed a "deep desire" to take mental health "out of the shadows," framing suicide as "the last stage of an illness" rather than something to be ashamed of.
- Short said he lost several people in the past year, including his sister-in-law, his daughter, and friends Diane Keaton, Rob and Michele Reiner, and Catherine O'Hara — calling the run of losses "staggering."
- Katherine was a licensed clinical social worker in private practice, holding a bachelor's from NYU (2006) and a master's from USC (2010), and was the eldest of three children adopted by Short and Dolman.
- The interview precedes Short's Netflix documentary Marty, Life Is Short, premiering May 12, which also covers his early-life losses — brother David's car-crash death when Short was 12 and both parents dying during his teens.
Why it matters: Short's deliberate framing of suicide as the final stage of a terminal illness — placed alongside his late wife's cancer — is a rare public stance from a major entertainer, and it lands just ahead of Netflix's May 12 documentary premiere, giving the message a built-in global platform rather than a one-off news cycle.
