Mary Beth Hurt, who was nominated for three Tonys and appeared in films including “Interiors” and “The World According to Garp,” died on Sunday from Alzheimer’s. She was 79.

Hurt’s death was confirmed via a joint Facebook post from her daughter, Molly Schrader, and her husband, writer-director Paul Schrader.

“She was an actress, a wife, a sister, a mother, an aunt, a friend, and she took on all those roles with grace and kind ferocity,” read the post. “Although we’re all grieving there is some comfort in knowing she is no longer suffering and reunited with her sisters in peace.”

Hurt worked on stage, in films and in television and collaborated with her husband, Schrader, on “Affliction” and “Light Sleeper.”

Born Mary Beth Supinger in Marshalltown, Iowa, she was married to actor William Hurt from 1971 to 1981. She studied acting at the University of Iowa and then at NYU and made her debut on the New York stage in 1974.

She was Tony-nominated for her performances in “Crimes of the Heart,” for which she won an Obie, “Trelawny of the Wells” and “Benefactors.”

Woody Allen cast Hurt in her first film role in the 1978 “Interiors,” in which she played one of the three sisters dealing with the breakdown of her family. She followed with “The World According to Garp,” playing Helen Holm Garp, “Chilly Scenes of Winter,” Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence” and “Six Degrees of Separation.”

She told the New York Times in 1989 that she preferred to be selective about film roles. “Fifty percent of the roles I’m offered in films are nothing. I don’t mean sizewise. There’s nothing of any interest in them. So I do the ones that are interesting, unless I haven’t done one in a long while. Then I’ll do one that isn’t interesting.”

On television, Hurt guested on shows including “Law & Order,” “Thirtysomething” and “Kojak.”

She was nominated for an Indie Spirit award for 2006’s “The Dead Girl” and also appeared in “Young Adult,” “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” “The Lady in the Water” and “Change in the Air.”

She is survived by Schrader, a daughter and a son.

At least 33 bodies — including children and dismembered remains stuffed in sacks — were unearthed from a mass grave in western Kenya on Thursday, raising questions about whether the corpses were secretly moved from a hospital morgue.

Detectives exhumed the remains of 25 children and eight adults, as well as dismembered body parts packed in gunny sacks, from a mass grave at a church-owned cemetery in Kericho, authorities said.

“We were able to establish that these were bodies transferred from Nyamira District Hospital to a private cemetery in Kericho,” Mohamed Amin, who leads the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, told reporters.

He said detectives are seeking to determine whether the bodies were legally disposed of after being removed from a morgue.

INVESTIGATION CONTINUES AFTER HUNDREDS OF CREMATED HUMAN REMAINS DISCOVERED, RECOVERED FROM NEVADA DESERT

The Associated Press reported that Kenyan law allows hospitals and morgues to dispose of unclaimed bodies after 14 days with court authorization.

Government pathologists conducted autopsies Thursday to determine the cause of death, though the identities of the victims have not been released.

Authorities have arrested two people in connection with the case.

HUNDREDS OF MUTILATED BODIES FOUND IN SUSPECTED NIGERIAN ORGAN-HARVESTING RING

Local media reported the bodies were transported in a government vehicle by unidentified individuals and buried hastily, with some gravediggers later alerting police.

“We need authorities to conduct a thorough investigation,” resident Brian Kibunja said.

Another resident, Samuel Moso, said authorities should “reveal if the government was involved or if a different group of people was behind the mass burial.”

PENNSYLVANIA MAN ALLEGEDLY FOUND WITH OVER 100 SETS OF HUMAN REMAINS IN HOME, STORAGE UNIT: ‘HORROR MOVIE’

There have been three major mass-grave incidents in Kenya over the past three years.

Police in 2023 uncovered hundreds of bodies buried in a forest in Kenya’s coastal Kilifi region, exhuming mass graves tied to a religious leader accused of starving his followers to death.

In 2024, authorities recovered nine bodies from a dumpsite in Nairobi, the Eastern African nation’s capital.

The latest discovery comes as concerns grow among some Kenyans over alleged abuses by police.

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Missing Voices, a human rights group, said it documented 125 extrajudicial killings and six enforced disappearances in Kenya over the past year, compared to 104 reported killings the year before.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

United States Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican, has said Congress should have a say in any decisions to deploy troops to Iran, further underscoring division within US President Donald Trump’s political party.

Mace’s comments on Sunday came days after she emerged from a classified House of Representatives briefing on the war, saying it had raised concerns over the administration’s plans.

They also came on the same day the Washington Post reported the Pentagon is preparing for limited ground operations in Iran, including raids on Kharg Island and sites near the Strait of Hormuz.

“If we’re going to do a conventional ground operation with Marines and 82nd Airborne that is a ground war that I believe Congress should have a say and we should be briefed,” Mace said during an interview on CNN.

“We don’t want troops on the ground,” Mace added.

“I think that’s a line for a lot of people. If we’re going to do that, then come to Congress and get the proper authorities to do so.”

Trump has so far not publicly supported deploying US troops to Iran, but has maintained that all options remain on the table. He has broadly claimed success in the month since the US and Israel launched the war on February 28, but his endgame and final timeline for the conflict have remained unclear.

Military analysts and Trump’s own director of national intelligence have said that while Iran’s military capabilities have been diminished in the fighting, the country still maintains the ability to inflict damage on the region and to potentially rebuild.

Many experts have also pointed to the limits of using air power alone in fully degrading Iran’s military capabilities, destroying its nuclear programme, or in achieving more comprehensive regime change.

In a statement on Sunday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not deny the Washington Post’s report, but said the Pentagon regularly prepares a range of options for the president to review.

“It’s the job of the Pentagon to make preparations in order to give the commander-in-chief maximum optionality. It does not mean the president has made a decision,” Leavitt told the newspaper.

Inter-party divisions

Deploying boots on the ground has been a major political Rubicon for Trump, who has long favoured swift and finite military action abroad in what he calls an “America First” strategy.

The decision would also be a major gut check for Republican lawmakers, who have generally thrown their support behind Trump even as influential figures in his “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement have condemned the war.

That was largely on display at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering held in Dallas, Texas over the weekend, where several speakers cheered the war or avoided the issue altogether.

However, former member of Congress and Trump ally Matt Gaetz directly decried any possible ground invasion.

“A ground invasion of Iran will make our country poorer and less safe,” he said. “It will mean higher gas prices, higher food prices, and I’m not sure we would end up killing more terrorists than we would create.”

The US has increased its military presence in the region in recent days, with the US Central Command (CENTCOM) saying about 3,500 additional soldiers arrived in the Middle East on board the USS Tripoli on Saturday.

About 2,000 soldiers from the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division were diverted from the Asia Pacific region prior to that.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was weighing sending an additional 10,000 troops to the region, where about 40,000 US troops are typically stationed.

Speaking to Politico last week, Representatives Eli Crane and Derrick Van Orden, both Republicans and former members of the military, also said their support for the war would shift if Trump deployed troops.

“My biggest concern this whole time is that this would turn into another long Middle Eastern war,” Crane told the news site.

“Though I don’t want to try and take away any of the president’s ability to carry out this operation, I know a lot of our supporters and a lot of members of Congress are very concerned,” he said.