The Man Who Wrote Travis Bickle — and Moved Into a Care Home for Love

He wrote the screenplay for Taxi Driver while living alone in Los Angeles, depressed, barely eating, and sleeping in his car. That darkness produced one of the most celebrated scripts in American cinema history.

But the detail that says the most about Paul Schrader isn’t found in any of his films. In 2023, Schrader moved into the senior living facility where his wife, actress Mary Beth Hurt, was receiving care for Alzheimer’s disease — just to be close to her.

The screenwriter who built a career exploring isolated, broken men turned out to be something his characters rarely were: steadfast. Mary Beth Hurt died on March 28, 2026, after a decade-long battle with the disease.

 

Born Into a House With No Movies

Paul Joseph Schrader was born on July 22, 1946, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son of Joan (née Fisher) and Charles A. Schrader, an executive.

The family attended the strict Calvinist Christian Reformed Church, and Schrader’s early life was shaped entirely by its rigid principles. The household didn’t just discourage cinema — it forbade it entirely. Schrader would only see his first film at the age of 17.

His brother Leonard would later become a screenwriter as well, co-writing several early projects with Paul. That a man raised in near-total cultural isolation became one of Hollywood’s most formidable voices is either irony or inevitability, depending on how you look at it.

 

A Calvinist Childhood That Never Really Left Him

The strictness of Schrader’s upbringing didn’t disappear when he left Michigan — it simply transformed into something more cinematic. He has described his mother taking his hand and stabbing it with a needle, telling him: “You know how that felt? Well, hell is like that — all the time.”

That particular theology — guilt, punishment, the impossibility of redemption — runs through virtually everything Schrader has ever written or directed. His characters don’t just suffer. They believe they deserve to. The Calvinist household that kept movies from him ended up being the single greatest influence on the films he made.

 

Calvin College to UCLA — The Education That Remade Him

Schrader attended Calvin College before pursuing film studies at UCLA, encouraged by film critic Pauline Kael. He earned his M.A. from UCLA’s graduate film program, where he began writing criticism for the Los Angeles Free Press and Cinema Magazine.

Kael’s mentorship was transformative — she didn’t just point him toward film school, she gave him permission to take cinema seriously as an intellectual pursuit. For a man raised to distrust pleasure, that reframing mattered.

 

The Screenwriter Who Defined an Era

Paul Schrader didn’t ease his way into Hollywood. He kicked the door in. He wrote the screenplay for Taxi Driver during a bout of drinking and depression in the early 1970s — and when Martin Scorsese filmed it in 1976, it established Schrader as one of the most important screenwriters of his generation.

He continued collaborating with Scorsese, writing or co-writing Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and Bringing Out the Dead (1999).

He also wrote an early draft of Close Encounters of the Third Kind for Spielberg and Obsession for Brian De Palma. As a director, his own filmography spans over two dozen films — including Blue Collar (1978), American Gigolo (1980), Affliction (1997), and First Reformed (2017), the last of which earned him his first Academy Award nomination.

In 2022, the Venice Film Festival awarded him a Career Golden Lion — a recognition that was decades overdue.

 

The Woman Who Became His Most Personal Collaborator

Mary Beth Hurt and Paul Schrader married in 1983. She had previously been married to actor William Hurt. Their creative partnership ran deep — Hurt appeared in two of Schrader’s films: Affliction (1997) and Light Sleeper (1992), the film Schrader has described as his most personal work. For a director whose films are almost always about men in crisis, casting his wife in key roles was a notable act of intimacy.

When Mary Beth was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2015, Schrader and their daughter Molly remained close to her through the decade-long decline that followed.

His decision to move into her care facility in 2023 was not announced publicly — it emerged only after her death, quietly and without fanfare, which felt entirely in keeping with the man.

Before him, Mary was married to William Hurt.

 

A Family Built Around Art and Loyalty

Paul and Mary Beth are survived by their two children — daughter Molly Schrader and son Sam Schrader. It was Molly who announced her mother’s passing on social media, with Paul joining her in a joint Facebook statement.

The family has remained largely private throughout the years of Mary Beth’s illness, a deliberate choice that reflects the same instinct toward guardedness that defines much of Schrader’s personal history.

They lived in New Jersey in the later years of their marriage, close to where Mary Beth received her final care.

 

What Five Decades of Uncompromising Cinema Is Worth

Paul Schrader’s net worth is estimated at approximately $30 million, accumulated across more than fifty years of screenwriting, directing, and critical work. For a filmmaker who has frequently operated outside the Hollywood mainstream and whose most celebrated work often came without mainstream commercial rewards, that figure reflects both longevity and the enduring licensing value of scripts like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.

 

3 Things That Make Paul Schrader Unlike Anyone Else in Hollywood

• He never saw a film until he was 17 years old — and within a decade of that first viewing had written one of the most influential screenplays in cinema history.
• He published a scholarly book, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, in 1972 — before he had written a single screenplay — and it remains a standard academic text on world cinema more than fifty years later.
• He wrote an early draft of Close Encounters of the Third Kind for Steven Spielberg, a project about as far removed from his signature voice as possible — which perhaps explains why it was ultimately rewritten.

 

Saying Goodbye After a Decade of Goodbyes

Mary Beth Hurt died on March 28, 2026, at an assisted living facility in Jersey City, New Jersey, after living with Alzheimer’s disease since her diagnosis in 2015. She was 79. Paul was with her.

In their joint statement, Paul and Molly wrote: “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.

Although we’re all grieving there is some comfort in knowing she is no longer suffering and reunited with her sisters in peace.”

 

The Man Behind the Lonely Men

Paul Schrader has spent his career writing characters who cannot connect — men locked inside their own heads, unable to love the people around them without destroying something in the process.

The biography behind those characters tells a different story. A man who walked away from a strict religious upbringing and taught himself cinema from scratch.

Who co-wrote some of the greatest American films ever made, then spent years making difficult ones nobody asked for. Who moved into a care home to sit beside his wife. Whatever his films say about isolation, Paul Schrader’s life says something quieter and more lasting: that he showed up.

FAQ

Who is Paul Schrader? Paul Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and critic born on July 22, 1946, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is best known for writing the screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and for directing American Gigolo, Affliction, and First Reformed, which earned him an Academy Award nomination.

Who was Paul Schrader married to? Paul Schrader was married to actress Mary Beth Hurt from 1983 until her death on March 28, 2026. The couple shared two children, daughter Molly and son Sam, and collaborated professionally on several of Schrader’s films.

What is Paul Schrader’s net worth? Paul Schrader’s net worth is estimated at approximately $30 million, built over more than five decades as one of Hollywood’s most prolific and respected screenwriters and directors.

Did Paul Schrader write Taxi Driver? Yes — Paul Schrader wrote the screenplay for Taxi Driver in the early 1970s during a difficult personal period. Martin Scorsese directed the film in 1976, starring Robert De Niro, and it became one of the most celebrated American films ever made.