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Bud Cort
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Bud Cort (born March 29, 1948) is an American film and stage actor, writer, and director. He is best known for his portrayal of Harold from Hal Ashby's 1971 film Harold and Maude
was born Walter Edward Cox in New Rochelle, New York, but eventually grew up near Rye, New York. His father, Joseph Parker Cox, who was a bandleader and pianist, also a World War II veteran, and merchant. His mother, Alma Mary Cox (née Court), was a reporter and a merchant, who also worked in MGM studios.
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Encyclopedia
Bud Cort (born March 29, 1948) is an American film and stage actor, writer, and director. He is best known for his portrayal of Harold from Hal Ashby's 1971 film Harold and Maude
Early life
Cort was born Walter Edward Cox in New Rochelle, New York, but eventually grew up near Rye, New York. His father, Joseph Parker Cox, who was a bandleader and pianist, also a World War II veteran, and merchant. His mother, Alma Mary Cox (née Court), was a reporter and a merchant, who also worked in MGM studios. Cort has 4 siblings, 3 younger sisters, and 1 older brother. His parents ran a clothing business in downtown Rye from the 1950s until the mid-1980s. Most of Bud's adolescence was spent caring for his father (who died in 1971) and sisters, reading and painting. As a teenager he was a local portrait painting prodigy and began taking acting lessons. He was educated in Catholic schools and graduated from Iona Preparatory School in New Rochelle in 1966.
Career
Cort was discovered in a revue by director Robert Altman, who subsequently cast him in two of his movies, MASH and Brewster McCloud (in which he played the title role).
Cort next went on to his most famous role, as the suicide-obsessed Harold, in Harold and Maude. Though the film was not particularly successful at the time of its release, it later gained international cult status and now is acclaimed as an American film classic.
On Broadway, Cort appeared in the short-lived 1972 play Wise Child by Simon Gray. Cort was invited to live with the famous comedian Groucho Marx in his Bel Air mansion, and was present at Marx's death in 1977.
In 1979, Bud’s life nearly ended in a car accident on the Hollywood Freeway. From behind, he collided with an abandoned car blocking a lane into which he was turning. Years of plastic surgery, enormous hospital bills, a losing court case, and the disruption of his career ensued.
Since, Cort has appeared in various film, stage and TV roles: Endgame, He Who Gets Slapped, Sledge Hammer!, The Chocolate War, The Big Empty, Theodore Rex, Dogma, But I'm A Cheerleader, Pollock, Arrested Development, The Secret Diary of Sigmund Freud and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Cort lent his voice to the computer in the movie Electric Dreams.
Cort performed the voice of Toyman, a Superman villain, over the course of various DCAU cartoons including Superman: The Animated Series, Static Shock, and Justice League Unlimited.
On the November 8, 2007 original episode of Ugly Betty, he made a guest appearance as the priest officiating at Wilhelmina Slater's ill-fated wedding.
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