Bud Cort

The face Hollywood didn't know how to categorize

Bud Cort wasn't looking to be a movie star. Robert Altman discovered him at a New York comedy club and decided that this young man with the faraway gaze fit perfectly into his cinematic chaos.

In 1970 he made his debut in M*A*S*H as Private Boone. It was a tiny role (just a few lines), but his look stuck in the director's mind.

Because Cort had something that both unsettled and fascinated people in equal measure.

A year later came Harold and Maude. During filming, Cort was confined to the Astrodome in Houston to stay connected to his character. The film was a resounding box office flop, yet it cemented his status as an absolute cult actor.

The macabre romance and the silence of the asphalt

In 1971, Harold and Maude was released. Critics at the time tore it apart without mercy. No one at the major studios understood why a young man obsessed with suicide would fall in love with an eighty-year-old woman played by Ruth Gordon.

Paramount tried to fire Cort three times before production began. But time put things in their place, and the film survived in re-release theaters for more than a decade.

And the gamble paid off.

But Cort's career suffered a sudden physical and professional halt. In 1979, a car accident on the Hollywood Freeway destroyed his face and broke several bones. He spent months in operating rooms and facial reconstruction procedures while leading roles vanished from his desk.

So he decided to take refuge in theater and voice work. He turned down offers that wanted to exploit his image as the strange young man because he preferred the anonymity of recovery.

Stellar supporting player in the new century

Art-house cinema was always his natural refuge.

Wes Anderson brought him to the mainstream in 2004 with The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. He played Bill Ubell (the expedition's accountant), and his presence brought the dry melancholy that only actors of his generation know how to handle.

In 1995 he appeared in Heat under the direction of Michael Mann. Although his appearances became more selective over the years, he never stopped working on projects that bordered on the experimental.

In 2018, he lent his voice to an episode of the series The Good Place. He still lives in Los Angeles and keeps a low profile, away from traditional press circuits.

In 1991 he earned a Grammy nomination for his narration of the audiobook of The Little Prince.