Inside Martin Short's Family Tragedies — Including Wife Nancy Dolman's Cancer Death and Daughter Katherine's Suicide

Behind Martin Short's comic charm lies a private life marked by repeated loss and tragedy.

The Only Murders in the Building actor has faced years of personal grief, starting when his older brother, David Short, was killed in a car accident in Montreal, Canada. Martin, the youngest of five siblings, was only 12 at the time.

For Martin, writing about painful memories in his memoir I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend was not necessarily a "cathartic" experience.

"I remember everything. I've lived with everything. So there were no surprises," he said in an interview. "What you don't know when you start is how open you're going to be: what you're going to tell, what you're not going to tell, what you feel comfortable telling.

"As you write it, you start to realize that it can't be a bunch of anecdotes about funny things that happened when I met Richard Burton. It has to have a little depth and understanding. That's why you write the book, because you gained wisdom in life and maybe you can give some of that wisdom to other people," he continued.

Martin's mother, Olive, died when he was 17 after battling cancer for years. Two years later, his father died of complications from a stroke.

The losses made him an orphan before he turned 20 years old. Despite enduring heartbreaks in his younger years, he said the tragedy he experienced helped prepare him to face greater challenges later in life.

"I think the reason all that didn't throw me sideways was because I had such a solid foundation," he told The Guardian in 2012. "Those kinds of situations are horrible but I think that you are either empowered by them or you become a victim of them."

Martin added, "I remember speaking to my friend the satirist Stephen Colbert a couple of days after a White House Correspondents' Dinner where he'd pushed it really, really far with his material in front of George W. Bush, who was not finding it funny at all."

"I said, 'Weren't you scared?' and he said, 'When I was 12, my father and two brothers were killed in a plane crash together. That day I was scared.' And when he told me that story I thought, 'I know from what you speak,'" he shared.

In a separate interview with CNN in 2013, the Three Amigos actor opened up about how loss — at any age — pushes people to feel "empowered in a weird way."

"You can either go into a direction of say being, 'I am going to be a victim from this. I'm going to be a drunk. I'm going to do drugs. But, you don't know what I've been through.' Or you become more resilient," said Martin.

He also told People that, while it "sounds like a tragic family," it "really isn't."

"My mother had cancer, and she had been ill and then in remission since I was 13. She was a remarkable person; both my parents were. So I never looked at it as if it was a tragedy – that I didn't have them my whole life," Martin clarified. "You learn some sense of priorities. Our whole family took the attitude that if you have wonderful moments, don't second-guess them, just enjoy them."

Martin went through another period of mourning when his wife of 30 years, Nancy Dolman, died from ovarian cancer at the age of 58 in 2010.

He described his marriage to the late actress as a "triumph," noting he still communicates with her "all the time."

"It's 'Hey, Nan,' you know? How would she react to this decision or that, especially regarding our three kids," he told AARP in 2019. "I believe that when people die, they zoom into the people that love them. This idea that it just ends, and don't speak of them — that's wrong. That's based on denial that we're all going to die. So to me, she's still here. At the same time, her death emboldened me to take risks. With real tragedy, you become a little more daring. It's the yin to the yang: the positive part of life's dark side."

The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to a call on from a Hollywood Hills home on February 23 regarding a possible suicide. TMZ later identified the deceased individual as Martin's daughter, Katherine.

OK! learned she died from a a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

"It is with profound grief that we confirm the passing of Katherine Hartley Short. The Short family is devastated by this loss and asks for privacy at this time. Katherine was beloved by all and will be remembered for the light and joy she brought into the world," the Short family said in a statement.

Katherine was the eldest child of Martin and Nancy's three adopted children.