Good Will Hunting songwriter Elliott Smith a suicide at 34

Elliott Smith, the singer-songwriter who received an Academy Award nomination for "Miss Misery," a song featured in out director Gus Van Sant's Oscar-winning film Good Will Hunting, has apparently committed suicide, his publicist and coroner's officials said Wednesday. He was 34. Smith was found by his live-in girlfriend Tuesday, Los Angeles County coroner records supervisor Marsha Grigsby told AP Radio. He sustained a single stab wound to the chest that appeared to be self-inflicted, she said. Smith's New York-based publicist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also confirmed his death. In 1997, Van Sant offered to use several of Smith's songs on the soundtrack to Good Will Hunting. The movie was a hit, bringing Smith's music to a mainstream audience. Smith had recently spoken in interviews about his struggles with alcoholism. "When I lived in New York I was really a bad alcoholic for a few years," he told Under the Radar magazine in an interview published in June. In an effort to quit drinking, Smith told the magazine, he had undergone treatment at the Neurotransmitter Restoration Center in Beverly Hills, Calif., which administers an intravenous solution meant to clear the bloodstream of toxins.