Bud Cort

Bud Cort (born March 29, 1948) is an American film and stage actor, writer, and director. He is best known for his portrayals of Harold in Hal Ashby's 1971 film Harold and Maude and the titular "hero" in Robert Altman's 1970 film Brewster McCloud. Both films have large cult followings today.

Early life
Cort was born Walter Edward Cox in New Rochelle, New York, but eventually grew up in Rye, New York. His father, Joseph Parker Cox, 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 four siblings—three younger sisters and one older brother. His parents ran a clothing business in downtown Rye from the 1950s until the mid-1980s. Most of Cort's adolescence was spent caring for his sisters and father; his father had multiple sclerosis and died of it in 1971. He also engaged in 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, Cort'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. He broke an arm and a leg and sustained a concussion and a fractured skull. His face was severely lacerated, his lower lip cut and hanging by a thread. Years of plastic surgery, substantial hospital bills, a lost 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 voiced Toyman, a Superman villain, over the course of various DCAU series 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.

He recently guest-starred on Criminal Minds in the episode "Mosley Lane," playing a predator who, with his wife, was kidnapping young children.