Selena Gomez Unveiled a Surprise Award for Martin Short’s Late Daughter, and the Room Was in Tears Before He Even Spoke

Some nights in Hollywood are about the dresses. Wednesday night at the Hollywood Palladium was about something else entirely. Selena Gomez stood on stage at the fourth annual Rare Impact Fund Benefit, and when she started talking about a woman the audience had never met, you could hear the room change. By the time Martin Short walked out to join her, there were tears everywhere.

Gomez, 34, revealed a brand-new honor called the Katherine Short Legacy Award, created in memory of Katherine Short, Martin Short’s 42-year-old daughter, who died by suicide on February 23. Katherine was a licensed clinical social worker, and the award is built around the very thing she devoted her career to: helping people through their hardest moments.

The announcement nobody in the room expected

The Rare Impact Fund Benefit raises money for youth mental health services, so the audience came ready for an evening about the cause. But Gomez made it personal. She told the crowd that one part of the night meant a great deal to her, then explained who Katherine was.

“Katherine was a social worker who devoted her own career to helping people through some of their hardest points,” Gomez said. She added that the award will carry Katherine’s name forward by honoring people who have made the same kind of commitment to their communities.

The first recipient was the La Familia Counseling Center, a Sacramento organization marking 50 years of service. It was a quiet, powerful choice: not a celebrity, not a big name, but the kind of community work Katherine herself believed in. Gomez called Martin Short her friend of many years and spoke warmly about how deeply he loves his family, then welcomed him to the stage to help present the honor for the very first time.

Martin Short’s emotional words stopped the room

Short, 76, has kept his family life out of the spotlight for decades. He rarely speaks about his grief in public. On Wednesday, he did, and the Hollywood Palladium went completely silent.

“It has been a very difficult year for me, needless to say,” he said. “It has been the heartbreak of our family, as you can imagine.”

He then said something that clearly hit the audience hard: in the last eight months, his whole family has come to understand that mental health and cancer are both diseases. “They are diseases, and sometimes diseases are terminal,” he said, referring in part to his late wife, Nancy Dolman, who died in 2010 after an ovarian cancer diagnosis. He and Nancy also shared two sons, Oliver, 40, and Henry, 37.

Short spoke openly about Katherine’s long fight with what he called “extreme mental health issues,” including borderline personality disorder. “She did the best she could until she couldn’t,” he said, his voice steady but heavy.

Then came the line people are still quoting: “My pain about losing my daughter will always be present in my heart, and I think that’s simply because what we deeply love we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us.”

He praised his daughter’s work as a clinical social worker and the open, compassionate conversations about mental health she committed herself to through her profession. And he made it clear that Gomez’s work mattered to him personally, calling it important to help people understand that mental health is simply an illness, not something “to be hidden in the shadows or perceived as a family embarrassment.”

It is rare to see a comedy legend talk this honestly about grief. Short, who stars alongside Gomez in Only Murders in the Building, let the mask drop completely. Those who were there said it felt less like a speech and more like a father talking to a room full of friends.

Why the night mattered beyond the speeches

Gomez founded Rare Beauty in 2020 as a beauty brand with a focus on mental health and self-acceptance. Through the company’s philanthropic arm, the Rare Impact Fund, her long-term goal is to raise 100 million dollars for organizations that provide mental health services to young people, including groups like The Trevor Project, Peer Health Exchange and Trans Lifeline.

So far, the fund has raised more than 30 million dollars and provides grants to 30 nonprofit organizations. Gomez herself said there is a lot more to do: “In my eyes, we still have a lot more to do. And it’s not just us. There’s so many people doing great things out there.”

She added that she wants young people to have a safe space, “a strong community,” wherever they are. It was a sincere, unpolished message, and it landed.

The playful moment nobody saw coming

For all the tears, the evening had a second, very different Selena Gomez moment, and fans are loving it. In a TikTok video posted around the benefit, Gomez gave a cheeky nod to her ex-boyfriend Nick Jonas while wearing a custom red Prada evening gown.

She lip-synced the Jonas Brothers’ 2008 hit “Burnin’ Up,” mouthing the famous “red dress” line, and captioned the clip “Feeling nostalgic.” Gomez starred as Nick’s on-screen love interest in the original music video, and the two dated from 2008 to 2010 after crossing paths on Disney Channel. She has spoken fondly of him since, and the clip was clearly meant in fun.

It was a small, human moment on an otherwise heavy night: one minute a charity founder honoring a lost social worker, the next a pop star goofing around to a song from when she was 15. That range is exactly why people keep rooting for her.

A night people will remember

Between the new award, Short’s devastatingly honest speech, and Gomez’s lighthearted TikTok, the fourth Rare Impact Fund Benefit felt like a snapshot of who Selena Gomez is: someone who can hold grief and joy in the same evening and mean both of them.

The Katherine Short Legacy Award will now exist as a permanent part of the benefit, honoring community mental health work every year. And for Martin Short, who accepted the first one in his daughter’s name, it was a rare public moment of a private man letting the world see what he carries.

What we deeply love we can never lose. Wednesday night, a whole room believed him.

If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.

Further reading

More on stars using their platforms: Selena’s fellow TV favorite Dylan Dreyer opened up about her divorce with surprising honesty, and the season’s big red carpets delivered moments like the InStyle Imagemaker Awards honoring the stylists behind the stars. Plus, Kendall Jenner’s candid TV moment had everyone talking.

Sources

Facts verified via Page Six (Oct 15, 2026) and Entertainment Weekly (Oct 15, 2026), with additional reporting from USA Today and Parade.