Bud Cort will always be known for appearing as the death-fixated, geriatric-loving Harold in Hal Ashby's cult favorite "Harold and Maude" (1971), in which he co-starred with Ruth Gordon. The almost owlish-looking actor has had difficulty finding another vehicle with such impact, yet he has continued to work--often playing psychiatrically-fraught characters--and has branched out into directing and screenwriting.
Cort was a college dropout performing stand-up and sketch comedy at Greenwich Village clubs when Robert Altman cast him as Private Boone in "M*A*S*H" (1970). Although Cort had actually made his film debut as an extra in "Up the Down Staircase" (1967) and had had bit roles on daytime soap operas, he became a full-fledged screen performer that year. In addition to "M*A*S*H", Cort starred in Altman's "Brewster McCloud", as a young man who wanted to fly inside Houston's Astrodome, and had roles in "The Strawberry Statement" and "Gas-s-s-s!" and "The Traveling Executioner". After the release of "Harold and Maude", though, he found himself typecast and turned down most of the "weirdo" roles he was offered. In fact, he made only one more film in the decade, "Why Shoot the Teacher?" (1977).
After being seriously injured in an automobile accident in 1979, Cort resumed his screen work, in part to finance litigation and plastic surgery. In 1980, he was a Fascistic villain in "Die Laughing" and his subsequent film roles were often in low-budget, obscure independent productions. Cort played the young psychiatrist in "The Secret Diary of Sigmund Freud" and voiced a jealous computer in "Electric Dreams" (both 1984). By the 90s, he had begun to move behind the camera, co-writing and directing "Ted and Venus" (1991), in which he also appeared as a disturbed poet.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Cort continued to appear sporadically in films of varying quality. On the higher end of the spectrum, he had roles in Michael Mann's "Heat" (1995), Kevin Smith's "Dogma" (1999), Wim Winders' "The Million Dollar Hotel" (2000) and Ed Harris' "Pollack" (2000). The actor got his showiest and most endearing role in recent years when he played the insurance bondsman turned pirate hostage Bill Ubell in Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou" (2004).
In the late 60s, Cort had appeared as a guest actor on episodes of TV series, including "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" and "Room 222", but his small screen work did not begin in earnest until 1980, when he played Bernard Marx in the tepid NBC adaptation of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". Subsequently, Cort was cast as Alex West, who inherited "The Bates Motel" (NBC, 1987) as well as the internal angst of Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in a spin-off, of sorts, from Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic "Psycho". He was also one of the myriad stars who made cameo appearances in HBO's "And the Band Played On" (1993). Cort has also continued to work in the theater.