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The actor Mary Beth Hurt, who starred in films including Interiors and The World According to Garp, has died of Alzheimer’s aged 79.

The news was confirmed on a joint Facebook post by her daughter, Molly Schrader, and her husband, the writer and director Paul Schrader.

“She was an actress, a wife, a sister, a mother, an aunt, a friend, and she took on all those roles with grace and kind ferocity,” read the post. “Although we’re all grieving there is some comfort in knowing she is no longer suffering and reunited with her sisters in peace.”

Born Mary Beth Supinger, she was married to the actor William Hurt between 1971 and 1982, and made her Broadway debut in 1974. Tony-nominated for her performances in Crimes of the Heart, Trelawny of the Wells and Benefactors, she also worked with her second husband, Schrader, on the films Affliction (1997) and Light Sleeper (1992).

Her film debut was in Woody Allen’s Bergman-esque 1978 drama Interiors, for which she won much praise. Other key films included The World According to Garp (1982), Slaves of New York (1989) and The Age of Innocence and Six Degrees of Separation, both from 1993.

In 1989, she told the New York Times that she worked selectively, as “Fifty per cent of the roles I’m offered in films are nothing. I don’t mean size-wise. There’s nothing of any interest in them. So I do the ones that are interesting, unless I haven’t done one in a long while. Then I’ll do one that isn’t interesting.”

In a 2010 interview, she said she preferred being part of an ensemble: “I’ve never been extremely comfortable playing the lead. I don’t like the responsibility; there’s a feeling that I have to be good. Besides, I found secondary parts much more interesting, especially when I was younger and the ingenue roles were pretty bland.”

Her later films included Young Adult, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Lady in the Water and Change in the Air. In 2023, Schrader posted that Hurt had been moved to a memory care facility in New York.