Martin Short, on losing his wife Nancy and daughter Katherine: “I don’t see any difference between mental illness as a disease and cancer as a disease.”

Content warning: this article discusses suicide.

Martin Short spoke publicly this week, for the first time, about the death of his eldest daughter Katherine. He sat with Tracy Smith for CBS Sunday Morning and gave a New York Times interview published this week. He drew the parallel between her death and his wife’s directly.

Martin and Nancy Dolman met in 1972 in a Toronto production of Godspell. They married in 1980 and adopted three children: Katherine, Oliver, and Henry. Nancy stepped back from acting, the SCTV and Soap years behind her, to raise the family.

Nancy was diagnosed with ovarian cancer around 2007 and fought it privately for three years. She died at home in Pacific Palisades on August 21, 2010, at 58. Her last words to him were “Martin, let me go.”

Katherine Hartley Short was a clinical social worker. She earned her bachelor’s from NYU in psychology and gender studies, then her master’s in social work from USC in 2010, the same year her mother died. She worked at UCLA’s Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, took pro bono cases at Public Counsel, trained at the West LA VA, and was affiliated with the Camden Center. She spent her career treating mental illness while privately living with severe mental illness of her own, including borderline personality disorder.

Katherine died by suicide on February 23, 2026, at her home in the Hollywood Hills. She was 42.

Martin said Katherine “fought for a long time with extreme mental health, borderline personality disorder, other things, and did the best she could until she couldn’t.” He framed her death the way he framed Nancy’s: Nancy said “Martin, let me go,” and Katherine, in her own way, was saying “Dad, let me go.”

He has never been in therapy. He processes grief by dictating notes. He says he’s “trying to head toward the light.”