Martin Short Discusses Daughter Katherine's Suicide, Compares It to Wife's Cancer Death

Martin Short spoke publicly for the first time about the death of his daughter, Katherine Short, calling it a nightmare for the family.

Katherine died in February at age 42 in her Hollywood Hills home. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's office ruled the death a suicide.

On CBS News Sunday Morning, the 76-year-old comedian and actor drew parallels between his daughter's death and that of his wife, Nancy Dolman, who died of ovarian cancer in 2010 at age 58.

"The understanding is that mental health and cancer, like my wife's, are both diseases, and sometimes with diseases they are terminal," Short said. "And my daughter fought for a long time with extreme mental health, borderline personality disorder, other things, and did the best she could, until she couldn't."

"So, Nan's last words to me were, 'Martin, let me go.' And what Katherine was just saying was, 'Dad, let me go.'"

Short expressed a deep desire to take mental health out of the shadows so people would not feel ashamed discussing it.

"Not hiding from the word suicide, but accepting that this can be the last stage of an illness," he said.

Short also discussed losing several close friends and family members in the past year, including his sister-in-law, his daughter, and friends Diane Keaton, Rob Reiner, Michele Reiner and Catherine O'Hara.

"It's staggering," he said. "You just have to breathe in, breathe out."

Katherine was the eldest of three children adopted by Short and Dolman. She stayed largely out of the spotlight but occasionally attended events and walked red carpets with her father. She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and gender sexuality studies from New York University in 2006 and a master's in social work from the University of Southern California in 2010. She worked in private practice as a licensed clinical social worker.

Short has spoken before about Dolman's death. In a 2012 Guardian interview, he said: "This is the thing of life that we live in denial about, that it will ever happen to us or our loved ones, and when it does you gain a little and you suffer a little. There's no big surprise."

Short gave the CBS interview ahead of a new Netflix documentary about his life, Marty, Life Is Short, which premieres May 12. The film covers Short's early losses: his older brother David died in a car accident when Short was 12, and both parents died when he was a teenager.

Short said those experiences built a muscle of survival and handling grief, along with a perspective on it and the bravery to perform. "I think if you've gone through that, an audience not liking you is really not that important anymore."