As 2024 comes to a close, we here at JoBlo.com would like to take a moment to pay tribute to some of the people who sadly passed away this year. Our deepest respect goes out to everyone in the industry we have lost, and our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of those who died in 2024. These talented individuals will always be remembered for their impact on the world of film and television.

In Memory Of…

David Soul

David Soul died on January 4th at the age of 80. The actor was best known for playing Detective Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson on Starsky & Hutch alongside Paul Michael Glaser.

Although Starsky & Hutch would become one of the most iconic shows of the ’70s, Soul and Glaser had no clue it would become as successful as it did. “We didn’t have a clue it was going to be so successful. That only happened in the second year,” Soul said in 2020. “Paul and I basically ran the shoot — the streets were our playground, and we’d be driving around with people shouting, ‘It’s Starsky and Hutch!’ But we took it very seriously. We improvised a lot, and we trusted each other, totally. There was no one-upmanship or anything like that.” The show lasted four seasons, with Soul and Glaser both directing multiple episodes.

In addition to Starsky & Hutch, Soul appeared in TV shows such as Flipper, I Dream of Jeannie, Star Trek, All in the Family, The F.B.I., Cannon, The Yellow Rose, Murder, She Wrote, Little Britain, and more. He also starred in Here Comes the Brides, a Western comedy series starring Joan Blondell. Soul also played Ben Mears in the Salem’s Lot miniseries.

On the big screen, Soul appeared in Magnum Force, The Hanoi Hilton, Appointment with Death, Pentathlon, and Filth. He also made a cameo appearance in the Starsky & Hutch remake starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Soul succeeded as a singer with a number-one single on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1977, Don’t Give Up on Us.

Glynis Johns

Glynis Johns was born into a theatrical family and debuted on stage at just three weeks old. She joined the London Ballet School when she was five years old, and just five years later, she was already working as a Ballet instructor. Although Johns had interests outside of show business, it felt like she was destined to be on screen. “There were situations that were hard for parents to turn down. It’s difficult to turn down a chance to star with Laurence Olivier, to say, ‘No, she has to go to school,’” Johns said in 1991. “They had a big decision to make … I was interested in everything. I wanted to be a scientist. I would’ve loved to go on and on at university. But you can’t do everything in life.“

Johns rose to international fame appearing alongside Laurence Olivier in 49th Parallel and went on to star in The Sword and the Rose, Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue, Mad About Men, The Court Jester, Around the World in 80 Days, The Sundowners (for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress), Lock Up Your Daughters, The Vault of Horror, The Ref, While You Were Sleeping, Superstar, and many more. But she’s best known for playing Mrs. Banks in Mary Poppins. She memorably performs the song Sister Suffragette in the film. Johns died on January 4th at the age of 100.

Peter Crombie

Seinfeld included plenty of stand-out characters throughout its nine-year run, but none were quite as menacing as Crazy Joe Davola, a writer who developed a pathological hatred of Jerry throughout the fourth season. Peter Crombie’s performance as the unhinged character never failed to spark fear in Jerry. He made his last appearance in the fourth season finale, where he leapt from the stands at a taping of Jerry’s pilot, bellowing “Sic semper tyrannis!”

In addition to Seinfeld, Crombie also made appearances on Spenser: For Hire, Perfect Strangers, Law & Order, Star Trek; Deep Space Nine, Diagnosis: Murder, L.A. Law, Grace Under Fire, L.A. Firefighters, House of Frankenstein, NYPD Blue, and Walker, Texas Ranger. He also appeared in movies such as The Blob, Born on the Fourth of July, Desperate Hours, The Doors, Rising Sun, Natural Born Killers, Seven, My Dog Skip, and more. Crombie died on January 10th at the age of 71.

Joyce Randolph

Joyce Randolph died on January 13th at the age of 99. She’s best known for playing Trixie Norton on The Jackie Gleason Show and The Honeymooners and was the last surviving member of the classic sitcom foursome. Her character was married to Ed Norton (Art Carney) on The Honeymooners. They were the neighbours of Ralph (Jackie Gleason) and Alice Kramden (Audrey Meadows).

Gleason hired Randolph to play Trixie after spotting her in a commercial for Clorets, and she made her first appearance as the character as a sketch on Cavalcade of Stars. “We just played ourselves,” Randolph explained. “Nobody told us to characterize in any way. It was learn those lines and go on… I love them all, but I love the sleepwalking one [when Norton wanders downstairs while snoozing]. And oh, any show in which I had more than six or seven lines I really loved.“

The Honeymooners sketches were so popular on The Jackie Gleason Show that they were spun into a half-hour sitcom. The show ended after just one season (consisting of 39 episodes). The show gained a huge following thanks to syndication, with some stations airing the episodes repeatedly for decades.

David Emge

David Emge may not have had many credits to his name, but he earned a place in horror royalty thanks to his starring role as Stephen “Flyboy” Andrews in George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.

“I loved that movie,” Emge said in a 1979 interview. “It was filmed outside of Pittsburgh in a nine-week shooting schedule with two weeks off for Christmas. A cold spooky show…Half of it was shot inside the shopping mall. We worked from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and had free run of the place.” By the film’s end, Flyboy unfortunately becomes one of the undead, and his zombie is one of the most iconic in the entire movie.

“Being the zombie was something that I could just like, grab onto,” said Emge in a Dawn of the Dead documentary. “I sat there for weeks and weeks watching all of these people coming up with ‘their’ zombie. And I’m thinking, what am I gonna do? I had to come up with something that was distinctive enough, so I thought, okay, now, so what happens to this guy? He gets bit in the neck, he’s bit in the leg, he’s shot in the arm, so basically the zombie image came out of the wounds that he received.” Emge also appeared in The Booby Hatch, Basket Case 2, and Hellmaster. He died on January 20th at the age of 77.

Norman Jewison

Norman Jewison, one of Canada’s most acclaimed filmmakers, died on January 20th at the age of 97. Jewison did it all throughout his long career, ranging from musicals to dramas to romantic comedies. He’s best known for In the Heat of the Night, Moonstruck, Fiddler on the Roof, and more.

Born in Toronto, Canada, Norman Jewison was an assistant director when CBC Television debuted. He went on to write, direct, and produce a variety of programming for the young network over the next seven years before moving to the U.S. His breakthrough movie was The Cincinnati Kid, which starred Steve McQueen. He went on to direct The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, The Thomas Crown Affair, Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar, Rollerball, F.I.S.T., A Soldier’s Story, …And Justice for All, Moonstruck, In Country, Other People’s Money, Only You, and The Hurricane.

An experience with racial prejudice during his younger years stuck with him, prompting him to direct In the Heat of the Night years later. He had been hitchhiking through the U.S. when he wound up in Memphis, Tennessee, hopped on a bus and sat near the back. “The bus driver looked at me,” Jewison told NPR in 2011. “He said, ‘Can’t you read the sign?’ And there was a little sign, made of tin, swinging off a wire in the center of the bus and it said, ‘Colored people to the rear.’ And I turned around and I saw two or three Black citizens sitting around me, and … a few white people sitting way at the top of the bus. And I didn’t know what to do, I was just embarrassed. So I just got off the bus and he left me there. I was left standing in this hot sun and thinking about what I had just been through. That this was my first experience with racial prejudice. And it really stuck with me.“

Jewison also launched the Canadian Film Centre after visiting the American Film Institute in the ’80s. “I got a phone call to visit the AFI in Beverly Hills,” Jewison told THR. “So I went up there and there’s a group of young filmmakers sitting on the floor and there’s John Ford with a bottle of whiskey. And he’s answering all their questions. I was just blown away. It was very exciting. So I thought, ‘Gee, if I could set up something like this in Canada, that would be great.’“

Gary Graham

Gary Graham died on January 22nd at the age of 73. He was best known for playing Detective Matthew Sikes on the Alien Nation TV series. Although the series was cancelled after just one season, it was followed by five TV movies, including Alien Nation: Dark Horizon, Alien Nation: Body and Soul, Alien Nation: Millennium, Alien Nation: The Enemy Within, and Alien Nation: The Udara Legacy. Graham returned for all the movies.

Graham is also known for his involvement in the Star Trek franchise. He made his first appearance in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, but his history with the franchise goes back even further as he was considered for the roles of Sisko in Deep Space Nine and Janeway in Voyager before it was decided that Deep Space Nine should have an African-American lead and Voyager should have a female captain. “That’s what I heard, from my agent and also from another source at Paramount,” Graham said in 2012. “I never heard it from either Berman or Braga, so I can’t give it full veracity.  You’ll have to ask them.  And the audition for any lead is always pretty exhaustive.  I think I remember the initial audition and two subsequent callbacks.“

He went on to play the recurring role of Ambassador Soval on Star Trek: Enterprise and turned up in several Star Trek fan productions, including Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, Prelude to Axanar, and Star Trek: Renegades. He also appeared in TV shows such as Starsky & Hutch, The Incredible Hulk, Knots Landing, CHiPs, The Dukes of Hazzard, T.J. Hooker, Moonlighting, M.A.N.T.I.S, JAG, and Nip/Tuck, as well as movies such as Hardcore, All the Right Movies, Robot Jox, Necronomicon, Steel, and Jeepers Creepers: Reborn.

Carl Weathers

Carl Weathers is best known for playing Apollo Creed in the Rocky franchise. As he explained in 2015, a verbal jab at Sylvester Stallone got him the role. “There was nobody to read with, and they said you’re going to read with the writer,” Weathers said. That writer was Stallone. “And we read through the scene, and at the end of it, I didn’t feel like it had really sailed, that the scene had sailed, and they were quiet and there was this moment of awkwardness, I felt, anyway,” Weathers said. “So I just blurted out, ‘I could do a lot better if you got me a real actor to work with.’ So I just insulted the star of the movie without really knowing it and not intending to.” Stallone felt like that was something Apollo would say, so he got the gig. “Sometimes the mistakes are the ones that get you the gig,” he said. Weathers would return for Rocky II, Rocky III, and Rocky IV.

He’s also known for playing Colonel Al Dillon in Predator. Weathers told GQ that the production was a constant competition between the cast. “You know, there’s a great line: what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. What happened during Predator stays in Predator,” Weathers explained. “But, yes, all is true. There were nightclubs. We were a bunch of young guys. We were all in our own way trying to one up each other. Of course, with training, Arnold had an entire gym there, so we were going to the gym working out to get all puffed up before scenes. Nobody wanted to look any weaker than the other guy. So, you know, it was competition constantly, competition in front of the camera, competition behind the camera, competition at night.” He also appeared in movies such as Magnum Force, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Semi-Tough, Force 10 from Navarone, Death Hunt, Action Jackson, Hurricane Smith, Happy Gilmore, Little Nicky, Eight Crazy Nights, Toy Story 4, and more.

Weathers played roles in TV shows such as The Six Million Dollar Man, Starsky & Hutch, Street Justice, In the Heat of the Night, The Shield, ER, and more. He also played himself in several episodes of Arrested Development, where he frequently stole the show (Baby, you’ve got a stew going!) Weathers’ final role took him to the Star Wars franchise, where he played Greef Karga in The Mandalorian and directed several episodes of the series. Weathers died on February 2nd at the age of 76.

Chris Gauthier

Chris Gauthier died on February 23rd at the age of 48. Many of us likely remember Gauthier from his role in Freddy vs. Jason, where he memorably tells Jason Voorhees to “go find yourself a pig to f***,” which prompts the supernatural killer to throw a flaming machete through Gauthier’s chest.

On the small screen, Gauthier is best known for playing Vincent on Eureka, the owner of the Cafe Diem. In a 2010 interview, the actor explained that the producers were looking for a very different type of actor. “If you’ve seen me you know I have the long curly hair, the big sideburns and all of that,” he said. “When they had the casting call for the Eureka pilot, they were looking for, I’ll use the term metrosexual, was sort of what they were after with Vincent. So when I arrived at the audition it was basically a bunch of guys who were wearing half-tops and skintight jeans, and there I was in my plaid shirt. If they were going for another look, then I gave them the antithesis of that, so it was really funny.“

Gauthier continued, “As each actor came out of the audition room, they commented, ‘Tone it down,’ or don’t be too eccentric, let’s say. When it was my turn, I just did my thing and they [the producers] were like, ‘Perfect.’ They loved it, and I think it was probably the juxtaposition of my burlyesque physique mixed with some effeminate tones.“

The actor also made appearances in TV shows such as Da Vinci’s Inquest, The L Word, Dead Like Me, Stargate Atlantis, Masters of Horror, Bionic Woman, Reaper, Supernatural, Harper’s Island, Sanctuary, Smallville, Psych, Once Upon a Time, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. He can be seen in movies such as 40 Days and 40 Nights, Insomnia, Agent Cody Banks, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Little Man, The Butterfly Effect 2, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, Watchmen, Monster Trucks, and more.

Kenneth Mitchell

Kenneth Mitchell died on February 24th at the age of 49. Mitchell is best known for playing multiple roles in Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek Lower Decks.

After experiencing constant twitching in his muscles, Mitchell believed he was suffering from either a pinched nerve or multiple sclerosis, so he was shocked when he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). This debilitating neurological disease slowly takes away a person’s ability to control their muscles. “The moment that they told us it was [ALS], it was like I was in my own movie,” Mitchell told People. “That’s what it felt like, like I was watching that scene where someone is being told that they have a terminal illness. It was just a complete disbelief, a shock.” A year later, Mitchell required a wheelchair, but many productions adapted, including Star Trek: Discovery. The role of Aurellio in the third season was written especially for him, with the character being a scientist who uses a hoverchair.

Mitchell appeared on TV shows such as Leap Year, Odyssey 5, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI: Miami, Jericho, Ghost Whisperer, Without a Trace, Lie to Me, Criminal Minds, Private Practice, Castle, The Mentalist, Grimm, Bones, Switched at Birth, The Astronaut Wives Club, Frequency, Nancy Drew, and The Old Man, as well as movies The Recruit, Miracle, Home of the Giants, and Captain Marvel.

Richard Lewis

Richard Lewis died on February 27th at the age of 76. He’s best known for playing a fictionalized version of himself on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. Lewis was a long-time friend of Larry David, although their relationship didn’t start on the best foot. They first met as teenagers at a summer sports camp, and Lewis couldn’t stand his future collaborator. “I disliked him intensely,” Lewis said last year. “He was cocky, he was arrogant… When we played baseball, I tried to hit him with the ball; we were arch-rivals. I couldn’t wait for the camp to be over just to get away from Larry. I’m sure he felt the same way.“

Years later, the pair reconnected. “We became friendly years later as young comics in New York, but I noticed something one night,” Lewis recalled. “‘There’s something about you I hate,’ I told him. ‘Wait, you’re that Larry David from summer camp.’ And he said, ‘You’re that Richard Lewis.’ We nearly came to blows.” Thankfully, they overcame it and gifted us with one of TV’s most delightful comic duos.

Lewis appeared in movies such as Once Upon a Crime, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Wagons East, Leaving Las Vegas, Vamps, She’s Funny That Way, Sandy Wexler, and TV shows such as Anything but Love, Tales from the Crypt, Hiller and Diller, Rude Awakening, 7th Heaven, Alias, Two and a Half Men, The Dead Zone, The Simpsons, Everybody Hates Chris, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Cleaner, ‘Til Death, Blunt Talk, and BoJack Horseman.

Akira Toriyama

Akira Toriyama is best known as the creator of Dragon Ball, one of the best-selling manga series of all time. Toriyama had an interest in drawing but didn’t consider manga as a possible career until he quit his job at an advertising agency. He submitted work to a Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine contest for the prize money. He didn’t win, but he was encouraged to keep drawing by Kazuhiko Torishima, who would become his future editor.

His first published work was Wonder Island, but he found his first significant success with Dr. Slump, which followed a little girl robot, her creator, and residents of the bizarre Penguin Village. The manga spawned its own anime series, as well as video games and nearly a dozen animated films. However, it was Dragon Ball which gave him his biggest success. The anime adaptations of Dragon Ball were even more successful than the manga, with the latest, Dragon Ball Daima, premiering months after Toriyama’s death.

Despite the tremendous success of the Dragon Ball anime series, it took Toriyama some time to appreciate it. “To be honest, I’ve never had a great interest in anime, not even in the past. Even when my works have been adapted into anime format, I end up being embarrassed to admit that I don’t like them,” he said. “About ten years ago, I was invited to review the script for a Dragon Ball anime film and, at the same time, I ended up drawing the character’s backgrounds and making some simple designs. It was amazing to discover that this kind of work could be rewarding and fun.” Toriyama died on March 1st at the age of 68.

M. Emmet Walsh

M. Emmet Walsh is best known for playing Bryant in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, the captain of the Los Angeles Police Department who tasks Deckard with tracking down the replicants at the beginning of the film. He told THR that the cast and crew weren’t quite sure what the make of the movie when they first saw it. “I don’t know if I really understood what in the hell it was all about,” Walsh said. “We all sat there and it ended. And nothing. We didn’t know what to say or to think or do! We didn’t know what in the hell we had done! The only one who seemed to get it was Ridley.“

He also played Loren Visser in Blood Simple, the first film directed by the Coen brothers. The unscrupulous private detective is one of Walsh’s best-known roles. “Every time, you [have to] try to figure something individual that works for the character,” Walsh told The Guardian in 2017. “If you’re playing a villain, you don’t play villain… Visser doesn’t think of himself as particularly bad or evil. He’s on the edge of what’s legal, but he’s having a lot of fun with all that. He’s a simple fella trying to make an extra buck and going a little further than he’d normally go in his business enterprises.“

Walsh made appearances in movies such as Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, What’s Up, Doc?, Serpico, The Gambler, Slap Shot, Airport ’77, The Jerk, Brubaker, Raise the Titanic, Ordinary People, Red, Missing in Action, Fletch, Critters, Back to School, Harry and the Hendersons, Raising Arizona, Red Scorpion, Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home, Romeo + Juliet, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Wild Wild West, The Iron Giant, Christmas with the Kranks, and Knives Out.

He was equally as prolific on the small screen, with roles in TV shows such as All in the Family, Bonanza, McMillan & Wife, The Rockford Files, Baretta, Starsky & Hutch, Little House on the Prairie, AfterMASH, The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, Home Improvement, The Outer Limits, The X-Files, NYPD Blue, Frasier, Damages, Empire, Sneaky Pete, The Righteous Gemstones, and more. Walsh died on March 19th at the age of 88.

Chance Perdomo

Chance Perdomo died on March 29th at the age of 27. He’s best known for playing Andre Anderson on the first season of Gen V, the popular spinoff of The Boys. Perdomo was already a fan of the main series and had auditioned for the role of Hughie. “I came into this as a fan of ‘The Boys,’ I actually had originally auditioned for Hughie, years ago,” Perdomo told Variety last year. “I read it and I thought it was such a great script. And I was like, ‘Whether I get it or not, I still want to watch the show.’ Then I watched ‘The Boys’ and I think, ‘Wow this has never been done, it’s amazing’. So then to get Andre was such a blessing because I come into it and I get to enjoy the playground that is ‘The Boys’ universe.“

He also played Ambrose Spellman in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. One of his first auditions was for the role of Jughead in Riverdale, and although Cole Sprouse wound up taking on the role, creator Roberto Aquirre-Sacasa kept him in mind for his next series. “[I] did some self-tapes, and I got quite a few rounds and I had no idea how close I got,” Perdomo told THR. “They kept me in mind, and I had no idea until later Roberto was like, ‘Brother, do you know how close you got?… It was almost you.’” The actor added that he didn’t have any hard feelings towards Sprouse. “I’m not even made,” he said. “I grew up watching Cole Sprouse and his brother [Dylan Sprouse], and to have come close and lose it to one of the people I used to watch, it’s good.“

Perdomo also played Landon Gibson in After We Fell, After Ever Happy, and After Everything.

Louis Gossett Jr.

Louis Gossett Jr. died on March 29th at the age of 87. His most memorable role was Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in An Officier and a Gentleman. The role won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, making him the first African-American actor to do so and the second African-American to win for acting after Sidney Poitier. During the climactic fight between himself and Richard Gere at the end of the film, the original script called for Gere’s character to win, but Gossett Jr. said the Marines forced a change. “The Marines changed it,” he said in 2010. “They said that an enlisted man would never beat up a Drill Sergeant. We’ll tear the place up unless you change it. They said, ‘If you don’t do this well, Mr. Gossett, we’re going to have to kill you.’“

Gossett Jr. is also known for playing Charles “Chappy” Sinclair in Iron Eagle, Iron Eagle II, Aces: Iron Eagle III, and Iron Eagle on the Attack. He’s also known for his appearances in movies such as The Landlord, The Deep, Jaws 3-D, Enemy Mine, Firewalker, The Principal, The Punisher, Toy Soldiers, The Perfect Game, Why Did I Get Married Too?, Outlaw Johnny Black, The Color Purple, and IF.

He also made appearances in TV shows such as The Mod Squad, The Young Rebels, Bonanza, Good Times, The Jeffersons, The Six Million Dollar Man, Little House on the Prairie, The Rockford Files, Touched by an Angel, The Dead Zone, Stargate SG-1, Family Guy, The Batman, Boardwalk Empire, Extant, Hap and Leonard, Watchmen, and more.

He also played Fiddler on Roots, an older slave who teaches Kunta Kinte English. Initially, he didn’t think much of the part, but he grew to appreciate Fiddler’s role in the story. “I was insulted when they decided to give me the part of Fiddler. He resembled Stepin Fetchit, the Uncle Tom part. But I said, ‘OK, I will take it. I’ll do something,’” Gossett Jr. told Parade in 2016. “Then doing the research I realized there’s no such thing as an Uncle Tom. If it wasn’t for Fiddler, we wouldn’t be in America. He was a survivor. He understood both cultures and knew how to maneuver to stay alive and be solvent. We needed that lesson in order to survive here today. Having done Fiddler is a stripe on my uniform now.” He reprised the role for Roots: The Gift.

Joe Flaherty

“You will not make this putt, ya jackass!” Joe Flaherty certainly made the most of his brief role as Donald the heckler in Happy Gilmore, and it’s no surprise that he had little trouble stealing the show considering his long comedy career.

Flaherty was a founding member of Second City Television (SCTV), along with John Candy, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis, and Dave Thomas. “We didn’t have a producer, nobody told us what to write, who to appeal to, we just wrote for ourselves,” Flaherty said in a 1999 interview. “We were the inmates running the asylum. We created our own little world and it paid off. … I wish we could do it again.“

Eugene Levy said Flaherty was the only comedian who could get him to break character on stage. “When you saw his eyes dancing on stage, you knew that his brain was churning up something incredibly funny,” Levy said. “And you just had to brace yourself for it, certainly if you’re working with him on stage, because he was the only guy who could really get me laughing on stage in a very unprofessional way.“

He appeared on TV shows such as Married… with Children, Maniac Mansion, Dinosaurs, Police Academy: The Series, Even Stevens, That ’70s Show, The King of Queens, Frasier, Clone High, Family Guy, and American Dad. He’s also known for playing Harold Weir on Freaks and Geeks. He made appearances in movies such as 1941, Stripes, Heavy Metal, Johnny Dangerously, Innerspace, Blue Monkey, Who’s Harry Crumb, Back to the Future Part II, The Wrong Guy, Detroit Rock City, Freddy Got Fingered, Slackers, National Security, Home on the Range, and more. Flaherty died on April 1st at the age of 82.

O.J. Simpson

O.J. Simpson died on April 10th at the age of 76. Considered one of the greatest running backs of all time, Simpson spent nine seasons playing for the Buffalo Bills before he was traded to the San Francisco 49ers. He was always interested in acting and even appeared in movies such as The Towering Inferno, Killer Force, Capricorn One, and Firepower while playing in the NFL.

Upon his retirement, Simpson continued acting, most notably as Detective Nordberg in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad, The Naked Gun 2+1⁄2: The Smell of Fear, and Naked Gun 33+1⁄3: The Final Insult. He also appeared on TV shows such as Medical Center, Roots, and In the Heat of the Night, and he even hosted Saturday Night Live, becoming the second athlete to do so.

However, all of his success was quickly overshadowed when he was charged with murdering his former wife, Nicole Brown and her friend, Ron Goldman, in 1994. The lengthy murder trial captured the attention of America unlike anything else, and his ultimate acquittal proved to be divisive. Just three years later, Simpson was found liable for the wrongful death of and battery against Goldman and battery against Brown in a civil suit. He also wrote If I Did It, a hypothetical description of the murders. The initial release of the book was cancelled, but the publishing rights were later awarded to the Goldman family, who released it under the title If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer with the word “If” significantly reduced on the cover.

Simpson found himself in trouble once again in 2007, when he and some friends attempted to recover sports memorabilia at the Palace Station hotel-casino in Las Vegas at gunpoint. He was sentenced to 33 years in prison but was released in 2017 after serving nine years.

Eleanor Coppola

Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis Ford Coppola, died on April 12th at the age of 87. She is best known for Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the 1991 documentary that chronicled the making of Apocalypse Now, the iconic 1979 movie plagued by a myriad of issues.

Eleanor first met her future husband on the set of Dementia 13, Francis’ feature directorial debut. Eleanor was the assistant art director on the movie, and the pair soon began dating before getting married in 1963. Each of their children, Gian-Carlo, Roman, and Sofia, would get into the movie business after spending their childhood years growing up on film sets, although Gian-Carlo sadly died in 1986 at the age of 22.

“I don’t know what the family has given except I hope they’ve set an example of a family encouraging each other in their creative process whatever it may be,” Eleanor told The Associated Press in 2017. “It happens in our family that everyone chose to sort of follow in the family business. We weren’t asking them to or expecting them to, but they did. At one point Sofia said, ‘The nut does not fall far from the tree.’“

Eleanor documented the making of Apocalypse Now, capturing events such as Martin Sheen’s nervous breakdown and the aftermath of the destruction of an expensive set, which nearly led to the entire project being abandoned. “I was just trying to keep myself occupied with something to do because we were out there for so long,” Eleanor said in 1991. “They wanted five minutes for a TV promotional or something and I thought sooner of later I could get five minutes of film and then it went on to 15 minutes. I just kept shooting but I had no idea … the evolution of myself that I saw with my camera,” continued Eleanor, who ended up shooting 60 hours worth of footage. “So, it was a surprise for both of us and a life-changing experience.“

Joining forces with co-directors Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, Eleanor transformed Hearts of Darkness into one of the best filmmaking documentaries ever made. She went on to helm several documentaries about the making of other films made by family members, including Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. At the age of 80, she made the leap to narrative features with Paris Can Wait, a comedy starring Diane Lane and Alec Baldwin, which Eleanor wrote and directed. She followed that up with Love Is Love Is Love in 2020.

Terry Carter

Terry Carter died on April 23rd at the age of 95. He’s best known for playing Colonel Tigh on Battlestar Galactica. He was initially cast to play Lieutenant Boomer but had to be replaced after he broke his ankle in a roller skating accident. Thankfully, creator Glen A. Larson wanted to keep him onboard and offered him the role of Tigh instead. Decades later, Carter reprised the role (now President Tigh) in Richard Hatch’s Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming, a proof-of-concept trailer produced to convince the studio to develop a new TV series or movie.

He’s also known for starring alongside Dennis Weaver in McCloud. The pair reunited for The Return of Sam McCloud, a TV movie which aired over a decade after the original series. Carter appeared in TV shows such as That Girl, Mannix, The Jeffersons, The Fall Guy, Mr. Belvedere, and Hamilton, and movies such as Foxy Brown, Benji, and Abby. He was one of the first Black actors to appear regularly on a TV sitcom series. He appeared in 92 episodes of The Phil Silvers Show as Private Sugarman.

Bernard Hill

Bernard Hill is best known for playing King Théoden in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Hill brought a lot to the character, including suggesting what would become one of Théoden’s best moments: When the Rohan King touches everyone’s spears with his sword at the battle of Pelennor Fields. “That was all my idea – which terrified me,” Hill explained in an interview with The One Ring. “That came out of a visit to the Weta workshop in the first week. I saw all the spears and weapons and stuff like that; and for some reason I thought of Pelennor Fields ­ y’know, like you do [chuckles] ­ and I thought of a kid going down the railings with a stick hmmm the king touching everybody’s spear it might be a Rohan tradition that kind of thing. I was thinking in those kind of terms; that the king gives his spirit and sword to them, that he goes into their spirit somehow through the spear, and we’re all in this together. This is it, we’re all going to die, but you’ve got the king’s spirit in you. That kind of stuff.“

Hill phoned writers Phillipa Boyens and Fran Walsh to pitch the idea and kept at it until they wrote it into the script. “Then I thought, ‘s**t! What have I said?!?’ Coz I couldn’t do it. From the horse performer’s point of view, I couldn’t have done it,” Hill said. “Then I went to more and more horse training, and I took more and more lessons; maybe 20 hours a week. And that’s apart from riding socially on the weekends ­ and I turned myself from a rider to a horseman. And that was the pay off really that fact that we actually went out and did it, that we filmed it, I did it and it was my idea. That was a real trip. And I actually DID it. I thought it was going to be… one of my big things, they gave me this unbelievable dialogue to say. ‘Ride for ruin and the world’s end.’ For something to say, you don’t get better than that, really. ‘Death! Spears shall be broken a red day.’ I can’t remember now, but God, was it a good speech.“

He appeared in Gandhi, The Bounty, The Ghost and the Darkness, True Crime, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Scorpion King, Gothika, Wimbledon, Valkyrie, ParaNorman, and more. He also played Captain Edward Smith in James Cameron’s Titanic. Hill died on May 5th at the age of 79.

Roger Corman

Roger Corman studied industrial engineering at Stanford University, but upon getting a job at U.S. Electrical Motors, he quickly realized it was not for him and quit after just four days, telling his boss, “I’ve made a terrible mistake. I really have to quit. Today.” He got a job at 20th Century Fox as a messenger, and a life-long career in film was born.

Corman worked his way up but realized that if he wanted to make his own films, he would have to do it himself. He wrote and directed movies Day the World Ended, Swamp Women, It Conquered the World, Not of This Earth, Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Undead, Teenage Caveman, A Bucket of Blood, The Wasp Woman, Last Woman on Earth, House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror, Tower of London, The Raven, The Terror, The Haunted Palace, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, The Masque of the Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, and so many more. He also famously shot The Little Shop of Horrors in just two days.

“I was having lunch with the head of a small rental studio where I had my office, and he said they had this rather nice set they had built, and it was a shame that they were going to have to tear it down,” Corman recalled. “I said, ‘I’ve always wanted to see what I could do with two cameras. I’ll rent that set for two days if I can experiment with it.’ He said, ‘Sure. Why not.’ We redressed the set a bit. Chuck and I went out to exactly the same coffeehouses and made up the story of Little Shop of Horrors. And I shot it in two days.“

Beyond the films he wrote, directed, and produced, Corman also gave a start to many young directors and actors, including Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, and more.

Corman received an Academy Honorary Award in 2009. In his acceptance speech, Corman said: “Many of my friends and compatriots and people who’ve started with me are here tonight, and they’ve all succeeded. Some of them succeeded to an extraordinary degree. And I believe they’ve succeeded because they had the courage to take chances, to gamble. But they gambled because they knew the odds were with them; they knew they had the ability to create what they wanted to make. It’s very easy for a major studio or somebody else to repeat their successes, to spend vast amounts of money on remakes, on special effects-driven tentpole franchise films. But I believe the finest films being done today are done by the original, innovative filmmakers who have the courage to take a chance and to gamble. So I say to you, ‘Keep gambling, keep taking chances.’“

He also made appearances in a handful of movies, many directed by the people whose careers he helped start. He can be seen in The Godfather Part II, The Howling, The Silence of the Lambs, Body Bags, Philadelphia, Apollo 13, Scream 3, and more. Corman died on May 9th at the age of 98.

Dabney Coleman

Dabney Coleman died on May 16th at the age of 92. He played Merle Jeeter on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, which he called “the turning point in my career” and “probably the best thing I ever did” while speaking with The A.V. Club in 2012. “[Jeeter] was just wonderful, just a once-in-a-lifetime character,” he said. “He was just the worst human being. … That’s kind of where it all started, as far as people’s belief that I could do comedy, particularly that negative, caustic, cynical kind of guy. I was pretty good at doing that.” He reprised the role on Fernwood 2 Night and Forever Fernwood.

He was also included in the main casts of a many shows, including Buffalo Bill, Fresno, The Slap Maxwell Story, Drexell’s Cast, Madman of the People, The Guardian, and more. He also voiced Principal Peter Prickly in Recess. He appeared in episodes of That Girl, Columbo, Boardwalk Empire, Ray Donovan, NCIS, Yellowstone, and more.

Coleman found that his career took off when he decided to grow a mustache. “Without the mustache, I looked too much like Richard Nixon,” Coleman said. “There’s no question that when I grew that, all of a sudden, everything changed.” Coleman also made appearances in movies such as The Scalphunters, Downhill Racer, The Towering Inferno, Midway, Rolling Thunder, 9 to 5, On Golden Pond, Tootsie, WarGames, The Muppets Take Manhattan, Cloak & Dagger, Dragnet, Clifford, You’ve Got Mail, Inspector Gadget, Stuart Little, Where the Red Fern Grows, Domino, and more.

Morgan Spurlock

Morgan Spurlock is best known for Super Size Me, the documentary that took America by storm upon its release in 2004. The concept was simple: Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days. He was also not allowed to refuse the “super-size” option when it was offered, but he couldn’t ask for it himself. At the close of the experiment, Spurlock had gained 25 pounds and suffered from mood swings, sexual dysfunction, and fat accumulation in his liver. The massive success of the documentary prompted a widespread debate about eating habits, although Spurlock’s later admission that he had not been “sober for more than a week” in three decades called into question some of the symptoms he experienced.

While Super Size Me took aim at McDonald’s, Spurlock said it could have been any fast-food company. “For me, it’s about the culture. If you think fast food as an American, you think McDonalds,” he said in a 2006 interview. “To me they represent every food chain you can think of. They have influenced every other chain, they all follow McDonalds business practices. It’s follow the leader, McDonalds came out with ‘Super Sizing’ in America, everyone else followed suit. I picked the company that in my mind, could most easily institute change across the board, if they wanted to.“

After Super Size Me, Spurlock directed many other documentaries, including Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope, Mansome, One Direction: This Is Us, and Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!. He also created and starred in 30 Days, a reality series in which he, or someone else, spends 30 days immersing themselves in a particular lifestyle, such as being in prison, living on minimum wage, living off the grid, etc. Spurlock died on May 23rd at the age of 53.

Albert S. Ruddy

Albert S. Ruddy died on May 25th at the age of 94. Ruddy is best known for producing The Godfather, now regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. Getting the film off the ground was no easy task, and Ruddy was pivotal in negotiating with the Italian-American Civil Rights League, which was led by mobster Joseph Colombo. One of the conditions the League insisted on was that the words “mafia” and “cosa nostra” could not be spoken in the film.

Ruddy was also responsible for ensuring Mario Puzo (who wrote the original novel and the screenplay for the movie) would watch his diet, which was easier said than done. “I had to promise his wife that if she let him come to California, I would watch his diet. Because Mario had diabetes. I said, ‘I’m gonna eat with him every night, Mrs. Puzo. I promise you. Every day.’” Ruddy told /Film. “So for the first month and a half, I’m picking up Mario in the morning; we’re both having a poached egg and a buttered muffin. And I’m losing weight and Mario isn’t. So I go into this pizza joint one night—Frankie’s—and Frankie’s telling me what a nice guy Mario Puzo is. I said, ‘How do you know Mario?’ He said, ‘I bring him a pizza every night!’ [Mario’s] getting f***ing heavy and my pants are falling down!“

Before The Godfather, Ruddy had his first big success by co-creating Hogan’s Heroes. “When the show became a smash, I got calls from every studio in town, asking for ideas for other shows that I had,” Ruddy said. He’s also credited as one of the creators of Walker, Texas Ranger.

Ruddy also created the story for The Longest Yard, which he produced. He reunited with star Burt Reynolds for The Cannonball Run and Cannonball Run II. He also produced Megaforce (and co-wrote the script), Impulse, Ladybugs, Bad Girls, The Scout, Million Dollar Baby, Cry Macho, and more.

Tom Bower

Tom Bower died on May 30th at the age of 86. He’s best known for his appearance in Die Hard 2, where he played the janitor of Dulles International Airport, who assists John McClane. He appeared in movies such as River’s Edge, Beverly Hills Cop II, Split Decisions, True Believer, Aces: Iron Eagle III, Raising Cain, White Man’s Burde, Nixon, Pollock, Hearts in Atlantis, High Crimes, The Hills Have Eyes, Appaloosa, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Crazy Heart, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, We Have a Ghost, and more.

The actor was also known for The Waltons, becoming a regular cast member on the series’ fifth season. He played Curtis Willard, a doctor who arrives to replace the previous physician. After hiring Mary Ellen Walton as his nurse, they fell in love and married. However, the character was killed off during the attack on Pearl Harbor, which Bower said was due to him asking for a little more money. “I asked for a very small raise, so they sent me to Pearl Harbor,” he explained in 2022. “Then, when they decided to bring the character back, washed up on a shore somewhere — which I didn’t think was a great idea anyway — I asked for the same small raise. … They just cast a different actor.“

Bower made appearances in TV shows such as The Rockford Files, The Bionic Woman, Hill Street Blues, Murder, She Wrote, Miami Vice, The X-Files, Roswell, The West Wing, Cold Case, Monk, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Criminal Minds, Grey’s Anatomy, and Lucky Hank.

Benji Gregory

Benji Gregory died on June 13th at the age of 46. He was best known for playing Brian Tanner on ALF, the classic ’80s sitcom which followed a suburban middle-class family who takes in a wise-cracking alien life form with a taste for eating cats.

Gregory reflected on his time on the show while speaking with People in 2000, saying, “The only times it felt like work was when the lights were on, and it was real hot.” He recalled “climbing under the stage and messing around with the staff,” but added that it came as a “relief” when the series was cancelled as he was done with acting. In addition to ALF, Gregory also appeared on TV shows such as The A-Team, T.J. Hooker, Punky Brewster, Amazing Stories, The Twilight Zone, and Murphy Brown. He also appeared in movies such as Never Forget and Jumpin’ Jack Flash. His final role was voicing Edgar the Mole in Once Upon a Forest.

After stepping away from Hollywood and graduating from school, Gregory enlisted in the U.S. Navy and became an aerographer’s mate on the USS Carl Vinson, specializing in meteorology and oceanography.

Donald Sutherland

Donald Sutherland died on June 20th at the age of 88. With very few exceptions, Sutherland appeared in at least one movie yearly throughout his seven-decade-long career. The actor started in horror films such as Castle of the Living Dead, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, and Die! Die! My Darling! before he landed the role of Vernon L. Pinkley in The Dirty Dozen.

The classic World War II movie put Sutherland on the map, but he would achieve immense fame just a few years later when he starred in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H as Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce. In a 2023 interview, Sutherland recalled the scene in which his character waves at a camera to say hello to his father and his parent’s reaction when they watched the movie in theaters. “When I said ‘Hi Dad,’ my father stood up in the Las Vegas cinema and said, ‘Hi Donny,’” Sutherland said. “And my mother tried to drag him down into the seat and his suspenders were elasticized. I mean, she nearly slingshotted him through the air.“

The prolific actor appeared in movies such as Kelly’s Heroes, Klute, Don’t Look Now, S*P*Y*S, 1900, The Eagle Has Landed, Animal House, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The First Great Train Robbery, Ordinary People, Lock Up, JFK, Backdraft, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Puppet Masters, Disclosure, Outbreak, A Time to Kill, Fallen, Virus, Space Cowboys, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Italian Job, Cold Mountain, Pride & Prejudice, Lord of War, Horrible Bosses, The Eagle, Ad Astra, Moonfall, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, and many more.

He’s also known for playing President Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games franchise. As he told GQ in 2014, he wasn’t actually offered the role; he pursued it himself. “I wasn’t offered it,” he said. “I like to read scripts, and it captured my passion. I wrote them a letter. The role of the president had maybe a line in the script. Maybe two. Didn’t make any difference. I thought it was an incredibly important film, and I wanted to be a part of it… I hadn’t read the books. To be truthful, I was unaware of them. But they showed my letter to the director, Gary Ross, and he thought it’d be a good idea if I did it. He wrote those wonderfully poetic scenes in the rose garden, and they formed the mind and wit of Coriolanus Snow.“

Sutherland also made appearances in TV shows such as The Saint, The Avengers, The Simpsons, the 2004 Salem’s Lot miniseries, Dirty Sexy Money, The Pillars of the Earth, Crossing Lines, Ice, Trust, The Undoing, Swimming with Sharks, and Lawmen: Bass Reeves.

Bill Cobbs

Bill Cobbs died on June 25th at the age of 90. He had memorable roles in movies such as The Hudsucker Proxy, The Bodyguard, That Thing You Do!, Ghosts of Mississippi, Night at the Museum, and so much more.

After serving for eight years in the U.S. Air Force, Cobbs sold cars and worked for IBM before he decided to give acting a try. After appearing in various theater productions, he made his feature film debut in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. “I came back home to see my mom and dad, and all our friends and neighbors went to see the movie, and everyone was waiting for my appearance,” Cobbs recalled in 2013. “I walk up to a policeman in the subway and say, ‘Hey, man. What’s goin’ on?’“

He went on to make appearances in movies such as Trading Places, Silkwood, The Brother from Another Planet, The Cotton Club, The Color of Money, Bird, New Jack City, The Hard Way, The People Under the Stairs, Demolition Man, Fluke, First Kid, Air Bud, Hope Floats, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, A Mighty Wind, Oz the Great and Powerful, and more.

Cobbs also made frequent appearances on the small screen in TV shows such as Good Times, The Equalizer, Sesame Street, L.A. Law, Empty Nest, Northern Exposure, NYPD Blue, ER, The Outer Limits, The Sopranos, Touched by an Angel, Six Feet Under, JAG, The West Wing, The Drew Carey Show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and more. He was also a regular on shows such as The Slap Maxwell Story, I’ll Fly Away, The Gregory Hines Show, The Others, The Michael Richards Show, and Go On. As a Star Trek fan, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Cobbs also played Dr. Emory Erickson, the inventor of the transporter, on Star Trek: Enterprise.

Martin Mull

Martin Mull died on June 27th at the age of 80. The hugely talented comedian and actor is best known for playing Colonel Mustard in Clue, Leon Carp in Roseanne, and Gene Parmesan in Arrested Development.

Mull got his start as a songwriter, penning A Girl Named Johnny Cash for singer Jane Morgan. He later set off on his own as a musical comedian before making the leap to acting. He quickly found fame as Garth Gimble in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, but the wife-beating character was not one he enjoyed playing.

“I thought they hired me because I was a comedian,” Mull said in 2014. “I was kind of surprised when all of a sudden we got all this Virginia Woolfish high drama. I didn’t like the character at all. I don’t care for violence, and wife beating is particularly repugnant to me, so it was quite hard.” He also played Barth Gimble, Garth’s twin brother, in the talk show parodies Fernwood 2 Night and America 2 Night alongside Fred Willard, who played his sidekick and announcer.

He went on to appear in TV shows such as The Golden Girls, The Larry Sanders Show, Just Shoot Me!, The Ellen Show, Reba, Reno 911, The War at Home, Two and a Half Men, ‘Til Death, Dads, Community, Life in Pieces, The Ranch, The Cool Kids, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and more. He also plays Willard Kraft in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the principal of Westbridge High and was nominated for an Emmy for his guest-starring role in HBO’s Veep. Mull was also a prolific voice actor, lending his talents to The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Wild Thornberrys, Dexter’s Laboratory, Danny Phantom, American Dad!, and Bob’s Burgers.

Mull also appeared in movies such as FM, Serial, Mr. Mom, Cutting Class, Ski Patrol, Mrs. Doubtfire, How the West Was Fun, Jingle All the Way, 101 Dalmatians, Richie Rich’s Christmas Wish, A Futile and Stupid Gesture, and more.

Robert Towne

Robert Towne died on July 1st at the age of 89. Best known as the screenwriter of Chinatown, Towne initially set out to work as an actor and writer and quickly found employment with Roger Corman. He scripted Corman’s Last Woman on Earth and co-starred in the film under the pseudonym Edward Wain. He also wrote The Tomb of Ligeia for Corman. Towne then earned a reputation as a top script doctor after Warren Beatty asked him to help out on Bonnie and Clyde. He made uncredited contributions to movies such as The Godfather, The Parallax View, Marathon Man, The Missouri Breaks, Heaven Can Wait, Crimson Tide, and more.

Towne first met Chinatown star Jack Nicholson in the late 1950s at an acting class taught by blacklisted actor Jeff Corey. They became friends and even lived together at one point, and Towne knew Nicholson was destined for fame. “From the moment I laid eyes on him, I knew Jack was gonna be a star. … I wouldn’t have been able to envision anyone else in the part,” Towne told Variety. “It wasn’t just his capacity for indignation, an innate sense that the world may not be fair but that it damn well should be. It was also his passion for clothing, a certain eye for the finer things, a disregard for — even aversion to — the ordinary.”

He wrote Chinatown with Nicholson in mind for the role of Jake Gittes but battled with director Roman Polanski over the ending, which he had imagined as more upbeat. “I felt it was too melodramatic to end it his way,” Towne said, but years later, he admitted, “I was wrong, and he was right.“

Decades later, Towne would return to the world of Jake Gittes with The Two Jakes, but the Jack Nicholson-directed sequel was met with mixed reviews and a lacklustre box office, forcing Towne to abandon plans for a third installment. Before his death, he had been working on a Chinatown prequel series with David Fincher and recently said that all the scripts had been completed.

Towne penned the scripts for The Last Detail, The Yakuza, Shampoo, Days of Thunder, The Firm, Love Affair, Mission: Impossible, and Mission: Impossible 2. He also directed several of his screenplays with Personal Best, Tequila Sunrise, Without Limits, and Ask the Dust.

He also wrote the script for Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, with the intention of directing it, but he was forced to sell his rights to the project, which he later said was “the biggest creative regret of my life.” He removed his name from the script, choosing to be credited as P.H. Vazak, which happened to be the name of his dog.

Jon Landau

Jon Landau died on July 5th at the age of 63. Not many people can say that they produced three of the biggest movies of all time, but that’s precisely what Landau did. Through his partnership with James Cameron, Landau produced Titanic, Avatar, and Avatar: The Way of Water, all of which belong to the illustrious $2 billion box office club.

After graduating from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Landau moved back to New York, where he worked as a production assistant on a TV movie of the week. When that job wrapped up, he was offered some accounting work. “I had no interest in accounting and certainly had no interest in filing, but I said yes,” Landau explained. “I read everything I filed. I don’t know that I was supposed to, but I did. I learned [a lot] in those two weeks.” From that moment, Landau climbed the rungs of the Hollywood ladder until he was hired to oversee physical production at 20th Century Fox at just 28 years old. It was there that he met James Cameron, who was in the midst of production on True Lies. While Landau was the “studio suit,” as Cameron put it, the pair came to respect each other, and the director convinced him to join his production company.

When Cameron showed Landau an early draft of Titanic, the producer knew this was something special. “[I] fell in love with it,” he said. “It was not just the script, but the idea that this could be the last time that an epic, old-fashioned movie is made, with hundreds and hundreds of extras — who aren’t digital.” With a budget that quickly ballooned and production delays, Titanic was a gamble, but it paid off big time. It became the highest-grossing movie of all time, a title it held for over a decade until Cameron’s own Avatar dethroned it. “James comes up with the great dreams,” said Landau in 2010. “And it’s my job to make those dreams come true.“

In addition to his work with Cameron, Landau also had a hand in Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Dick Tracy, Solaris, and more.

Shelley Duvall

Shelley Duvall got her start in Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud during an audition she didn’t even realize was an audition. She had hosted a party which featured paintings by her then-fiance Bernard Sampson, and several crew members from Brewster McCloud happened to be there. Intrigued by her looks, they invited her to pitch Bernard’s paintings to some “art patrons,” but it was really a secret audition. “I was really quite mean to her, as I thought she was an actress,” Altman later recalled. “But she wasn’t kidding; that was her. She was an untrained, truthful person. She was very raw in Brewster but quite magic.“

Duvall would continue working with Altman on McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us, Nashville, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson, 3 Women, and Popeye. She also appeared in movies such as Annie Hall, Time Bandits, Roxanne, Suburban Commando, The Underneath, The Portrait of a Lady, Home Fries, and more.

Of course, Duvall’s most iconic role is that of Wendy Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The role was emotionally and physically draining as Kubrick demanded, at times, hundreds of takes. “[Kubrick] doesn’t print anything until at least the 35th take. Thirty-five takes, running and crying and carrying a little boy, it gets hard. And full performance from the first rehearsal. That’s difficult,” Duvall told THR. “But after a while, your body rebels. It says: ‘Stop doing this to me. I don’t want to cry every day.’ And sometimes just that thought alone would make me cry. To wake up on a Monday morning, so early, and realize that you had to cry all day because it was scheduled — I would just start crying. I’d be like, ‘Oh no, I can’t, I can’t.’ And yet I did it. I don’t know how I did it. Jack said that to me, too. He said, ‘I don’t know how you do it.’“

Kubrick was later accused of being unusually cruel to push Duvall’s performance, but the actress said the director was “very warm and friendly to me.” She continued, “He spent a lot of time with Jack and me. He just wanted to sit down and talk for hours while the crew waited. And the crew would say, ‘Stanley, we have about 60 people waiting.’ But it was very important work.“

Duvall also created several TV shows aimed at families, including Faerie Tale Theatre (which she introduced by saying, ‘Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall’), Tall Tales & Legends, and Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories. She died on July 11th at the age of 75.

Richard Simmons

Richard Simmons died on July 13th at the age of 76. The iconic fitness guru always played himself in one way or another. “You know, when I first did my videos, I’m sure people thought I was silly and a little bit different,” Simmons told People. “But they seemed to embrace that I was just an ordinary guy, nothing special about me, except maybe my sense of humor. When I was a waiter at Derrick’s [a now-closed restaurant in L.A.], I was a real cut-up…I made people laugh. There was no menu, so I did the menu verbally — and if there was a guy at the table, I would sit on the guy’s lap.“

Simmons struggled with his weight as a child and was nearly 270 pounds by the time he graduated high school. When he was 20 years old, he found an anonymous note on the windshield of his car that read: “Dear Richard: Fat people die young. Please don’t die.” Simmons started taking his health and fitness more seriously and moved to Los Angeles, where he opened Ruffage and the Anatomy Asylum, a combination health-food restaurant and exercise studio.

After appearing in an interview with Regis Philbin, Simmons got a call offering him a role on the popular soap opera General Hospital. “I met with the most powerful woman in daytime television. Gloria Monty. I also met with the head writer Pat Falken Smith. These ladies were very smart,” Simmons said. “They told me their idea. I would teach exercise classes in a disco for all the ladies on the show. A week before taping the show the studio asked me if I could drive over and do some promotional photos. In my car I brought with me six jogging suits….My make up…some towels and five pound weights. I still could not believe I was going to be on a soap.” He played a recurring role on the soap, appearing in over 80 episodes.

He appeared in TV series such as CHiPs, Amazing Stories, Dinosaurs, The Larry Sanders Show, Rocko’s Modern Life, All My Children, Hercules, Johnny Bravo, Arrested Development, and Fish Hooks. Of course, who can forget Sweatin’ to the Oldies, a series of videos which became some of the most popular workout videos of the decade.

James B. Sikking

James B. Sikking died on July 13th at the age of 90. The actor was best known for playing Howard Hunter on Hill Street Blues, the leader of the Emergency Action Team. Sikking has said he based the character on a drill instructor he met during basic training at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. “The drill instructor looked like he had steel for hair and his uniform had so much starch in it, you knew it would [stand] in the corner when he took it off in the barracks,” Sikking said in 2014. “So when I started to play Howard, I picked out the way he should be dressed. It had to be a very military look.“

Sikking is also known for Doogie Howser M.D., in which he played Dr. David Howser, the father of Neil Patrick Harris’s character. He appeared in TV shows such as The Outer Limits, The Fugitive, Bonanza, Hogan’s Heroes, Mission: Impossible, M*A*S*H, Columbo, Little House on the Praire, Hawaii Five-O, Brooklyn South, Batman Beyond, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Closer.

The actor also made plenty of appearances on the big screen, with roles in Point Blank, Charro!, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, The Magnificent Seven Ride!, Scorpio, The Terminal Man, Capricorn One, Ordinary People, Outland, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, The Pelican Brief, Fever Pitch, Made of Honor, and more.

Shannon Doherty

Shannen Doherty died on July 13th at the age of 53. At a young age, Doherty appeared on Father Murphy, a series produced by Michael Landon, who cast her as Jenny Wilder on Little House on the Prairie.

“That show, Little House, shaped me in so many ways and it still is the best experience of my entire career,” Doherty recalled. “It’s kind of amazing because, when I think about the long span of my career, but also how rough some jobs were — and unenjoyable to be a part of, a little bit toxic — it was really the experience on Little House that spurred that passion on for being an actor. And it was having a mentor like Michael Landon — and I don’t care what anybody else’s experience was like, I know the truth about that man, and he was just unbelievable.“

Following Little House, Doherty starred alongside Wilfred Brimley on Our House and made appearances in TV shows such as Magnum, P.I., Airwolf, Highway to Heaven, 21 Jump Street, Heathers, Riverdale, and more. Of course, she’s best known for playing Brenda Walsh on Beverly Hills, 90210. After four seasons, she was dismissed from the show amid conflicts with other cast members and producers. “There was definitely a time that I did not want to be there. I was unhappy,” Doherty said in 2005. “It sounds odd to say that I was on a hit show making a lot of money and I was unhappy, because it makes me sound unappreciative — I wasn’t. It’s just that the sacrifice at the time seemed too large to me. The sacrifice of a camera pointed in my face 24 hours a day while I was desperately trying to grow up, to figure out my spirituality, to figure out my boyfriends. I mean, I was a teenager.” She returned years later for the 90210 reboot series and played a heightened version of herself on BH90210 alongside many of the original cast members.

Doherty also starred alongside Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs in Charmed, but her character was killed off in the third season and replaced by Rose McGowan. The actress was also featured in movies such as The Secret of NIMH, Night Shift, Heathers, Naked Gun 33 ¹/₃: The Final Insult, Mallrats, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and more.

Cheng Pei-pei

Cheng Pei-pei is best known for playing Golden Swallow in Come Drink with Me, widely considered to be one of the greatest wuxia films of all time. The film also turned the actress into a martial arts pioneer, paving the way for strong, independent female characters in martial arts movies. She’s also known for playing Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

She appeared in movies such as Princess Iron Fan, Golden Swallow, Brothers Five, Flirting Scholar, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, Meditation Park, and Disney’s live-action Mulan. Despite her status as a martial arts legend, Pei-pei said she “never considered herself a martial arts lady, I’m really a dancer. I tell my children that it’s a bonus to be a dancer because you are graceful, can kick high, bend low. But kung fu is different; you must learn to use your power, and the body types are different. In Crouching Tiger, people ask me how come Chow Yun-fat doesn’t know how to fight? I tell them it’s not important, because he’s an actor and the movie is a movie and not a documentary. Fights are universal, but in drama you must know your culture and accept that; otherwise you won’t understand why something happens the way it does. Love in Chinese and Western films are communicated differently, but fights are the same, and we can understand what they’re fighting about.“

Like many martial arts stars, Pei-pei faced her fair share of injuries. “I used to get injured a lot and my ankles were always twisted. The worse one was with Lo Wei, a Golden Harvest Film, None But the Brave,” she said. “I was married, had children, and the stunt coordinator wants be to jump down from a second floor window in a split. But my legs are too long, so my legs hit the window and then hit my nose when I jumped. I was out cold. I also broke my ankle, but I insist that I finish the scene because I didn’t want to hold up production and lose any money.” Pei-pei died on July 17th at the age of 78.

Bob Newhart

Bob Newhart died on July 18th at the age of 94. Known for his pitch-perfect, deadpan humour, the comedian is best known for starring in The Bob Newhart Show as psychologist Robert “Bob” Hartley. The show was a big hit and is regarded as one of the best sitcoms of all time. He followed it up with Newhart, where he played Dick Loudon, an author who moves to rural Vermont with his wife to operate the Stratford Inn. The finale of Newhart is one of the most memorable in TV history, as it revealed that the entire series was a dream of his character from The Bob Newhart Show.

Newhart initially started as an accountant and didn’t have any dreams of show business. Still, he began developing a comedy routine by making prank phone calls with a friend to amuse themselves at work. This later led to a record deal. “Keep in mind, when I started in the late fifties, I didn’t say to myself, ‘Oh, here’s a great void to fill — I’ll be a balding ex-accountant who specializes in low-key humor,’” Newhart said. “That’s simply what I was and that’s the direction my mind always went in, so it was natural for me to be that way… I tend to find humor in the macabre. I would say 85 percent of me is what you see on the show. And the other 15 percent is a very sick man with a very deranged mind.“

After the failure of his third sitcom, Bob, he went on to make appearances on TV shows such as Murphy Brown, The Simpsons, ER, Desperate Housewives, NCIS, Hot in Cleveland, and The Librarians. He also played Arthur Jeffries, aka Professor Proton, on The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon. Newhart can also be seen in movies such as Hell Is for Heroes, Catch-22, The Rescuers, First Family, The Rescuers Down Under, In & Out, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, Elf, Horrible Bosses, and more.

Charles Cyphers

Charles Cyphers is best known for his collaborations with filmmaker John Carpenter, appearing in Assault on Precinct 13, Someone’s Watching Me!, Elvis, The Fog, and Escape from New York. He also played Sheriff Leigh Brackett in Halloween and Halloween II. He reprised the role for Halloween Kills. During an appearance at HorrorConUK 2022, Cyphers said it was “shocking” but “wonderful” to be asked back. “To be called back again in a film, it’s unheard of after 40 years. Most people are dead.“

Cyphers also made appearances in movies such as Truck Turner, Vigilante Force, MacArthur, A Force of One, The Onion Field, Death Wish II, Grizzly II: Revenge, Major League, Loaded Weapon 1, and more. On the small screen, he can be seen in episodes of Cannon, Barnaby Jones, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Starsky & Hutch, Roots, Wonder Woman, The Dukes of Hazzard, Hill Street Blues, Night Court, 21 Jump Street, Freddy’s Nightmares, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, seaQuest DSV, Murder One, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He died on August 4th at the age of 85.

Patti Yasutake

Patti Yasutake died on August 5th at the age of 70. She’s best known for playing Nurse Alyssa Ogawa on Star Trek: The Next Generation. She debuted in the fourth season and was featured in multiple episodes each season until the series came to a close, but she always wanted to appear more. “I’m an actor – you wanna be there all the time,” she said. “You wanna be on the lot working all the time. But it was really fun when you get the call to come back because it made you feel good that you were probably doing something that they appreciated. Joy, the head hair designer, used to say ‘You’re her mascot!’ [Points to Gates McFadden]. So I thought fine, I’ll take it.” She reprised the role in Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact.

Yasutake made appearances in TV shows such as T.J. Hooker, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Mr. Belvedere, Tales from the Crypt, Murphy Brown, Picket Fences, Judging Amy, Crossing Jordan, Grey’s Anatomy, Bones, Boston Legal, Flashforward, The Closer, Pretty Little Liars, and Notorious. One of her final roles found her playing Fumi in the first season of Netflix’s Beef. “I was just elated, this many decades into my career, that a role like this would come along,” she said, adding that the script from creator Lee Sung Jin really connected with her. “[It] really, really, really spoke to the Asian American experience, and yet it wasn’t necessarily about that. Because he writes from such a humanistic standpoint, and he writes from such humanity. Then all the details come from the specifics of their lives. There were so many [moments where] I thought, ‘Are people going to get some of this?’ Because there’s so many inside jokes in terms of our cultural communities — and he included so many of them, from Southeast Asian to Chinese to Korean to Japanese.“

Yasutake also appeared in movies such as Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Drop Dead Gorgeous, and more.

Rachael Lillis

Rachael Lillis died on August 10th at the age of 55. She’s best known for providing the voices of Misty and Jessie in the English dub of the Pokémon TV series. She also voiced a number of Pokémon throughout the series, including Jigglypuff, Vulpix, Venonat, Goldeen, and more. She returned for many of the Pokémon movies, including Pokémon: The First Movie, Pokémon The Movie 2000, Pokémon 3: The Movie, Pokémon 4Ever, and more.

Veronica Taylor, who voiced Ash Ketchum for the first eight seasons, announced Lillis’ death with a touching tribute. “Rachael was an extraordinary talent, a bright light that shone through her voice whether speaking or singing. She will be forever remembered for the many animated roles she played, with her iconic performances as Pokemon’s Misty and Jessie being the most beloved,” Taylor wrote. “Rachael was so thankful for all the generous love and support that was given to her as she battled cancer. It truly made a positive difference. I was lucky enough to know Rachael as a friend. She had unlimited kindness and compassion, even until the very end. She had a great sense of humor, was wonderful to be with, incredibly intelligent, and had such a memory. She worked hard and cared deeply. I am not sure how this very dark void will be filled now that her light no longer shines in it.“

In addition to her work on Pokémon, Lillis also lent her voice to Revolutionary Girl Utena, Berserk, Sonic X, Genshiken, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, Hunter x Hunter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Winx Club, and much more.

Alain Delon

Alain Delon died on August 18th at the age of 88. After a stint in the French Navy, Delon caught the attention of producer David O. Selznick, who offered him a seven-year contract in the United States on the condition that he learn English. Instead, his lover, Michèle Cordoue, convinced her husband, Yves Allégret, to give him a role in Send a Woman When the Devil Fails.

“I didn’t know how to do anything,” Delon recalled. “Yves Allégret took one look at me and said: ‘Listen to me very carefully, Alain: Talk like you talk to me. Look like you look at me. Listen like you listen to me. Don’t act, live.’ That changed everything.” The actor’s breakthrough role came with Purple Noon, the first adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley.

He went on to appear in movies such as Rocco and His Brothers, L’Eclisse, The Leopard, La Piscine, The Sicilian Clan, Borsalino, Le Cercle Rouge, Un flic, Scorpio, Borsalino & Co, The Concorde… Airport ’79, Asterix at the Olympic Games, and more. His most iconic role is that of assassin Jef Costello in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï. His portrayal was highly praised and has continued to influence characters in movies worldwide. “It’s something that surpasses me, that exists beyond me,” Delon said of his character. “The samurai is me, but unconsciously so.“

John Amos

John Amos died on August 21st at the age of 84. He’s best known for playing James Evans Sr. on Good Times, a spin-off of Maude, which was itself a spin-off of All In the Family.

Amos was invited to read for the role alongside Esther Rolle, who would play Florida Evans. “Everybody knew who Norman Lear was. I’d seen the pilot episode of All in the Family and thought, ‘There’s no way in the world they’re going to put that on television.’ … Sure enough, it became a hit,” Amos recalled in 2014. “So I went in and read with Miss Rolle for Norman Lear, with just the three of us in his office. When we finished the reading, Norman looked at Esther, and Esther looked at me and looked at Norman and said, ‘He’ll do just fine.’“

However, Amos disagreed with the show’s increased focus on Jimmie Walker’s character J.J. and his “Dyn-o-mite!” catchphrase. “We had a number of differences. I felt too much emphasis was being put on J.J. in his chicken hat, saying ‘Dy-no-mite!’ every third page,” Amos said. “I felt just as much emphasis and mileage could have been gotten out of my other two children, one of whom aspired to become a Supreme Court justice, played by Ralph Carter, and the other, BernNadette Stanis, who aspired to become a surgeon. But I wasn’t the most diplomatic guy in those days, and [the show’s producers] got tired of having their lives threatened over jokes. So they said, ‘Tell you what, why don’t we kill him off? We can get on with our lives!’ That taught me a lesson — I wasn’t as important as I thought I was to the show or to Norman Lear’s plans.“

In addition to Good Times, Amos made appearances in TV shows such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Maude, Future Cop, The Love Boat, The A-Team, Hunter, 704 Hauser, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, In the House, King of the Hill, The West Wing, The Outer Limited, All About the Andersons, Men in Trees, Psych, Two and a Half Men, 30 Rock, The Ranch, The Last O.G., The Righteous Gemstones, and more. He also played the adult Kunta Kinta in Roots.

He also appeared in movies such as Vanishing Point, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, The Beastmaster, Coming to America, Lock Up, Two Evil Eyes, Die Hard 2, Ricochet, Dr. Dolittle 3, Madea’s Witness Protection, Bad Asses on the Bayou, Uncut Gems, Coming 2 America, and more.

Obi Ndefo

Obi Ndefo died on August 28th at the age of 51. Ndefo is best known for playing Bodie Wells on Dawson’s Creek and Rak’nor on Stargate SG-1. The actor had memorable roles in TV shows such as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Angel, Star Trek: Voyager, Crossing Jordan, NYPD Blue, The West Wing, NCIS: Los Angeles, and more.

Five years ago, Ndefo’s life changed forever when he was struck by a drunk driver in a grocery store parking lot. The impact of the crash led to the amputation of both of Ndefo’s legs above the knee. The driver fled the scene and was captured the next day, but not before he injured someone else in another hit-and-run. “I just started repeating, ‘I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive,’ just to keep myself calm,” Ndefo said.

Throughout the various surgeries and rehab, Ndefo doubted whether he could continue without legs, but he put himself on a positive path. “I can do this,” he said. “And I want to keep being a contributor to the world.” At the time of the crash, he had been writing Juice Bar, a potential TV series focused on the health movement. He had even included a character who faced the same obstacles that Ndefo found himself in following the hit-and-run. “I was in the process of interviewing amputees, and it’s really surreal,” Ndefo said.

James Darren

James Darren died on September 2nd at the age of 88. The actor got his big break playing Jeffrey Matthews, aka Moondoggie, in Gidget, the surf film starring Sandra Dee and Cliff Robertson. He also sang the film’s main theme but had to convince the producers he could do it. “They were thinking about having someone do the vocal and I would lip sync,” Darren recalled. “I told them I could do it. So we went into one of the sound stages and I sang ‘Gidget.’ They said, ‘He sings fine,’ then I did all the other songs.” He reprised the role for Gidget Goes Hawaiian and Gidget Goes to Rome.

Darren appeared in movies such as Rumble on the Docks, Let No Man Write My Epitaph, The Guns of Navarone, Venus in Furs, Lucky, and more.

On the small screen, he’s best known for playing Officer Jim Corrigan in T.J. Hooker and holographic crooner Vic Fontaine on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. At first, Darren turned down the Star Trek role, but it became one of his favourites. “They said I was going to be playing a singer and I said, ‘No, that’s too much on the nose. I want to pass.’ That’s what I told my agent,” Darren said in 2019. “Then, my agent called me again and I passed again. I passed three times. Finally, my agent said, ‘Why don’t you at least read the script? If you read the script you may love it.’ Of course, I did read the script and, of course, I did love it. It was just a great role. Vic Fontaine was like – what can I say? – it was a dream come true for me. It was one of the most enjoyable roles for me to have played.“

He also starred alongside Robert Colbert and Lee Meriwether in Irwin Allen’s The Time Tunnel and appeared in TV shows such as Hawaii Five-O, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Diagnosis: Murder, Melrose Place, and more.

James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones died on September 9th at the age of 93. The actor is best known for providing the iconic voice of Darth Vader throughout the Star Wars franchise, but that’s only scratching the surface of his incredible legacy.

For an actor known for his deep, commanding voice, it’s remarkable that he struggled with speaking at an early age. When he was five, he was sent to live with his grandparents in Michigan. The experience was so traumatic that he developed a severe stutter that led to him refusing to speak. “I was a stutterer. I couldn’t talk,” Jones explained. “So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.” The actor credited his English teacher, Donald Crouch, with helping him overcome his stutter. Crouch discovered Jones wrote poetry and encouraged him to read it aloud to his class.

Jones took a liking to drama during his University years, and like many young actors, he got his start on the stage. He even won a Tony Award for Best Actor for his starring role in The Great White Hope and later reprised the role for the feature film adaptation. Jones made his film debut in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and went on to appear in movies such as Claudine, The Greatest, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Conan The Barbarian, Coming to America, Field of Dreams, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Sneakers, The Sandlot, Clear and Present Danger, Coming 2 America, and so much more.

As for Star Wars, Jones was paid just $7000 for the voice role and went uncredited for the first two films. By the time Return of the Jedi rolled around, he finally agreed to be credited as the voice of Darth Vader. “When Linda Blair did the girl in The Exorcist, they hired Mercedes McCambridge to do the voice of the devil coming out of her. And there was controversy as to whether Mercedes should get credit. I was one who thought no, she was just special effects,” Jones said in 2009. “So when it came to Darth Vader, I said, no, I’m just special effects. But it became so identified that by the third one, I thought, OK I’ll let them put my name on it.” Jones voiced the character in the original trilogy and returned for Revenge of the Sith, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and several episodes of Star Wars: Rebels. For the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, Lucasfilm used archival recordings and AI to recreate the voice.

He also voiced Mufasa in The Lion King and even reprised the role for the 2019 remake. Next to Darth Vader, Mufasa is probably Jones’ most recognizable role, and he always enjoyed the reaction of young children as they realized he played the character. “Their parents will say, ‘There’s Mufasa!’ But I don’t look like a lion, and if they’re real little kids, they think they’re being shafted or having the wool pulled over their eyes,” Jones said in a 2011 interview. “And I can’t roar to prove it to them, but I can say [in Mufasa’s voice], ‘Simba. You have deliberately disobeyed me!’“

Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith died on September 27th at the age of 89. The iconic British actress is best known for playing Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter franchise. Although Smith had been a well-known actress for decades, her appearances in the franchise changed her life by introducing her to a new legion of young fans. “A lot of very small people used to say hello to me,” Smith recalled during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show. “And that was nice. One kid once said to me ‘Where you really a cat?’ And I heard myself say ‘Just pull yourself together, how could I have been?’“

She’s also known for playing Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, in Downton Abbey. Despite the grand nature of her character, the world of English aristocracy wasn’t something Smith could relate to. “Oh, goodness, it’s so way beyond me. I’m far, far, far from that,” Smith told NPR. “But of course, that’s one of the joys of acting is that you can move up in the world, even if – you know, in the characters that you’re playing, even if you don’t. So it was – it’s always very nice to be somebody rather grand. Now I seem to be stuck with it, which is a bit of a strain.” She reprised the role in the first two Downton Abbey movies.

Smith also had a reputation for being blunt and not suffering fools gladly. “Every time I start anything, I think, ‘This time I’m going to be like Jude [Dench], and it will all be lovely, it will be merry and bright, the Quaker will come out in me,’” Smith said. “It’s gone too far now to take back. If I suddenly came on like Pollyanna, it wouldn’t work — it would frighten people more if I were nice. They’d be paralyzed with fear. And wonder what I was up to.“

She appeared in movies such as Othello, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Murder by Death, Death on the Nile, California Suite, Clash of the Titans, Evil Under the Sun, A Room with a View, Hook, Sister Act, The Secret Garden, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Richard III, The First Wives Club, Gosford Park, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Kris Kristofferson

After leaving the U.S. Army, Kris Kristofferson moved to Nashville to try to make it as a songwriter. He got a job sweeping floors at Columbia Recording Studios and met June Carter and asked her to pass along a tape of his to give to Johnny Cash. Kristofferson also worked as a commercial helicopter pilot, and when weeks went by without hearing anything from Cash, he landed a helicopter on his front lawn. The move paid off big time. “It started a whole performing career I just didn’t anticipate,” Kristofferson said. “I was tickled to death that people were just starting to cut my songs.“

Once Kristofferson had established himself as a singer and songwriter, he turned his attention to Hollywood. He worked with Martin Scorsese on Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. “I was scared to death and stupid and slow and Marty was bright and fast and articulate and compassionate and intense, and it was wonderful,” he said. “And then on Taxi Driver, you had Robert De Niro giving Cybill Shepherd one of my albums [and] quoting my songs; she said my name like I was Bob Dylan or something.” Kristofferson appeared in movies such as Cisco Pike, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Vigilante Force, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, A Star is Born, Semi-Tough, Convoy, Heaven’s Gate, Big Top Pee-wee, Millennium, Lone Star, Payback, Planet of the Apes, D-Tox, Where the Red Fern Grows, Dolphin Tale, and more.

Of course, many know him best for playing Whistler alongside Wesley Snipes in Blade, Blade II, and Blade Trinity. Kristofferson died on September 28th at the age of 88.

John Ashton

John Ashton is best known for playing Sergeant John Taggart in Beverly Hills Cop. The action-comedy helped propel Eddie Murphy to super-stardom, but Ashton had no idea the film would become as huge as it did. “It totally surprised me,” Ashton said in 2020. “I mean, I got my degree in theater, and I did theater for a lot of years. [In theater] you just go in and do your job, hope for the best and hope you’re doing the job well. I don’t think ahead, I just go in day by day and do my work, do the best that I can, and hopefully, it turns out well. But I don’t think of results when I’m working. I just think of the moment. And [on Beverly Hills Cop] every day was a pleasure, and then luckily, it came out to be a huge hit. Judge [Reinhold] and I were blown away by the reception it got. And of course, after that, you can’t walk down the street. So it was quite the surprise but a pleasant surprise.“

He returned for Beverly Hills Cop II, but scheduling conflicts prevented him from taking part in Beverly Hills Cop III. However, he did return for Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, which was released just two months before his death. He was also featured in movies such as The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Last Resort, King Kong Lives, She’s Having a Baby, Midnight Run, Little Big League, Instinct, Gone Baby Gone, and more.

Ashton appeared in TV shows such as Columbo, Police Woman, Wonder Woman, M*A*S*H, Starsky & Hutch, Dallas, Police Squad!, The Twilight Zone, The Tommyknockers, King of the Hill, Judging Amy, and more. He also took the lead in his own crime drama, Hardball, but it was cancelled after just one season. Ashton died on September 26th at the age of 76.

Nicholas Pryor

Nicholas Pryor died on October 7th at the age of 89. The actor is best known for playing the father of Tom Cruise’s character in Ricky Business, the father of Robert Downey Jr.’s character in Less Than Zero, and Chancellor Milton Arnold on Beverly Hills, 90210. In a note delivered to THR after his death, Pryor wrote that he “was enormously grateful to have been, for nearly 70 years, a working actor.“

Pryor appeared on several soap operas throughout his long career, including stints on Another World, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, The Nurses, and Port Charles. He was also featured in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Eight is Enough, East of Eden, M*A*S*H, Little House on the Praire, Dallas, Knight Rider, The Bronx Zoo, Moonlighting, Murder, She Wrote, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, Party of Five, The West Wing, NYPD Blue, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and more.

He also made appearances in movies such as Damien: Omen II, Airplane!, Brain Dead, Hoffa, Executive Decision, Murder at 1600, Collateral Damage, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, Doctor Sleep, and Halloween Kills.

Paul Morrissey

Paul Morrissey died on October 28th at the age of 86. He started making short silent comedies on 16mm, but his career took on a new direction when he met Andy Warhol, who invited him to The Factory to work on his films. His collaborations with Warhol include My Hustler, Chelsea Girls, The Velvet Underground and Nico: A Symphony of Sound, Flesh, Lonesome Cowboys, Trash, Women in Revolt, Heat, L’Amour, and more.

He later left for Italy, where he wrote and directed Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula back-to-back. During the initial release, they were titled Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and Andy Warhol’s Dracula. In his later years, Morrissey didn’t exactly seem fond of Warhol. “Don’t say ‘Warhol films’ when you talk about my films! Are you so stupid, you talk to people like that? I have to live through this for fifty years,” Morrissey said during a 2020 interview. “Everything I did, it’s Warhol this, or he did them with me. Forget it. He was incompetent, anorexic, illiterate, autistic, Asperger’s — he never did a thing in his entire life. He sort of walked through it as a zombie, and that paid off in the long run. But I just cannot take that shitty reference.“

Morrissey also directed and co-wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, his first and only studio film, but it was a critical and commercial disappointment. Morrissey himself said it was “the only film I’m connected with that I don’t think was very good.“

Teri Garr

Teri Garr was playing various characters on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour when Gene Wilder recommended her for what would become one of her most prominent roles — Inga in Young Frankenstein. The actress had originally been hoping to land the role played by Madeline Kahn but was told to come back the next day with a German accent to audition for Inga. “At first I didn’t know there was an accent, and [when I found out] I was doing Sonny & Cher,” Garr said. “Cher’s hairdresser was German, and I just copied everything she said.“

She also went to her audition with a bra filled with socks. “People pay over $5,000 for a boob job today,” Garr wrote in her 2005 memoir. “Mine cost under $5 at Woolworths and got me the part, my biggest to date.” 1974 was a big year for Garr; in addition to Young Frankenstein, she appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation.

Garr went on to appear in movies such as Oh, God!, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Black Stallion, One from the Heart, Tootsie, The Sting II, The Black Stallion Returns, Mr. Mom, Firstborn, After Hours, The Player, Mom and Dad Save the World, Dumb and Dumber, Michael, Dick, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Ghost World, and more.

Her first major role on television was in Star Trek for the episode Assignment Earth. It was intended to launch a spin-off series, but it never materialized. Garr also appeared in episodes of McCloud, The Bob Newhart Show, M*A*S*H, Cher, Tales from the Crypt, Duckman, Frasier, Friends, Batman Beyond, King of the Hill, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and more. Garr died on October 29th at the age of 79.

Jonathan Haze

Jonathan Haze died on November 2nd at the age of 96. He was best known for playing Seymour in Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors, which was famously shot in just a few days. “All the interior scenes in the movie were done in two days, they were like 20-hour days, and then we went out on the streets and did three nights with a second unit, with a totally different crew. It was insane,” Haze recalled in 2001. “We were shooting actually on Skid Row, using real bums as extras. We would pay them 10 cents a walk-through.“

Haze was working at a gas station when he was offered a small role in Monster from the Ocean Floor, the first movie Corman ever produced. This sparked a partnership which lasted for years, with Haze appearing in many of Corman’s productions. He appeared in movies such as The Fast and the Furious, Five Guns West, East of Eden, Apache Woman, Dementia, It Conquered the World, Not of This Earth, The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, Stakeout, Teenage Caveman, The Terror, X-The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, Blood Bath, and more.

Tony Todd

After studying theater at the Eugene O’Neill National Actors Theatre Institute, Tony Todd made the leap to the silver screen, making one of his first appearances in Oliver Stone’s Platoon as Sergeant Warren. He also played Ben in Tom Savini’s Night of the Living Dead, but he became a true horror icon after playing Daniel Robitaille in Candyman. His terrifying yet touching performance scared the hell out of a generation of movie fans, something the actor was continuously surprised by. “The genuine terror that people have towards it. I do conventions and people [wait] in line only to tell me that I scared the bejesus out of them when they were kids,” Todd told /Film in 2021. “And that used to bother me because I went back to Bernard [Rose, director of “Candyman”]. I said, “Did we make a kids’ movie?” And he says, “Tony, anybody that saw the film when they were young will remember it forever.” He reprised the role in Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh and Candyman: Day of the Dead and returned for Nia DaCosta’s Candyman movie.

Todd also appeared in movies such as Bird, The Crow, The Rock, Wishmaster, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Hatchet, Victor Crowley, and so much more. The man was prolific. He also played William Bludworth in the Final Destination franchise, a funeral director with a unique knowledge of Death. He played the role in Final Destination, Final Destination 2, and Final Destination 5. He returned for the upcoming Final Destination: Bloodlines, which will hit theaters later this year.

On the TV side, Todd was in just about everything. He played Kurn, Worf’s brother, on Star Trek: The Next Generation, later reprising the role on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He also played the adult Jake Sisko in one of DS9′s most touching episodes and appeared on Star Trek: Voyager as the Alpha Hirogen. One of my favourite performances from Todd was in an episode of The X-Files in which he played a Vietnam vet who has been unable to sleep for decades. He absolutely stole the show. Todd also appeared in episodes of 21 Jump Street, Night Court, MacGyver, Law & Order, Homicide: Life on the Street, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, Angel, Smallville, Andromeda, Boston Public, CSI: Miami, 24, Chuck, The Flash, The Orville, Scream: Resurrection, and more.

He also lent his voice to various video games, including Star Trek: Elite Force II, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Star Trek Online, and Spider-Man 2 as Venom. His final voice role will arrive in December with the release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Todd died on November 6th at the age of 69.

Earl Holliman

Earl Holliman died on November 25th at the age of 96. He was placed in an orphanage at birth and was adopted by his new parents when he was just a week old. “When [his adoptive parents] came to see me, I was sick and they took me right away to the doctor, who apparently said, ‘You don’t have a baby here, you have a funeral expense,’” he said. “They paid the midwife $7.50 for me — this was in the backwoods of Louisiana.“

Holliman is best known for starring alongside Angie Dickinson in Police Woman as Sergeant William “Bill” Crowley. “She’d get into trouble and I’d run in and save her,” Holliman said in a 2003 interview. “I would make some smart remark and she would come back at me in some sexy kind of way, and a lot of that was ad-libbed. We had a tacit kind of permission to do that.“

He went on to appear in movies such as Broken Lance, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Forbidden Planet, Giant, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Last Train from Gun Hill, Visit to a Small Planet, and The Sons of Katie Elder. He also won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for her performance in The Rainmaker. He can be seen in episodes of Hotel de Paree, Wide Country, Bonanza, The Fugitive, Gunsmoke, Police Story, Empty Nest, Murder, She Wrote, Caroline in the City, and more. He also starred in the very first episode of The Twilight Zone.

Jim Abrahams

Jim Abrahams died on November 26th at the age of 80. Abrahams found his first success writing The Kentucky Fried Movie with childhood friends David and Jerry Zucker, but their next project would make them comedy icons.

While looking for material, the trio came across Zero Hour!, a 1957 melodrama involving a World War II pilot who had to overcome his fear of flying when the entire crew fell ill. They borrowed plot details, dialogue, and even the name of the main character, and thus, Airplane! was born. Instead of using comedians, they insisted on using actors who, up to that point, had been known for their dramatic work. “The biggest struggle was to cast straight actors as opposed to comedians,” Abrahams said in 2019. “At first, Paramount was resistant to that idea. They didn’t quite understand why we wanted to do something like that. There was something very endearing about those four actors spoofing themselves in the movie. In essence, they had had full careers, and they were kind of having a laugh at their own expense.“

After the massive success of Airplane!, Abrahams and the Zucker brothers struggled to get their next project off the ground. “We kind of figured after Airplane! that we’d be able to pop one of these babies out every year or two. We didn’t quite understand what we had with Airplane!, I don’t think,” Abrahams said. “We didn’t quite get the importance of a story. We struggled coming up with a story for a while. We came up with a lot of bad ideas.“

They turned to television instead and developed Police Squad! starring Leslie Nielsen, but the series was cancelled, with only six episodes produced. However, the concept was successful on the big screen with The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, and Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult.

Abrahams also directed and co-wrote Top Secret!, Hot Shots!, Hot Shots! Part Deux, and Mafia!– so many exclamation points. He also directed Ruthless People, Big Business, Welcome Home, and Roxy Carmichael and co-wrote Scary Movie 4.

Art Evans

Art Evans died on December 21st at the age of 82. He’s best known for starring alongside Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2 as Leslie Barnes, the chief engineer of Dulles International Airport who helps John McClane take down the terrorists.

Evans is also known for playing PVT. James Wilkie in Norman Jewison’s A Soldier’s Story, starring alongside Howard Rollins and Adolph Caesar. He also made appearances in movies such as Death Wish, Youngbloods, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, Christine, Fright Night, Ruthless People, School Daze, The Great White Hype, Metro, and more, as well as TV shows such as M*A*S*H, The Fall Guy, 9 to 5, Doogie Howser, M.D., Mad About You, Family Matters, City of Angel, The X-Files, Monk, and Last Man Standing.

When asked about what he’s learned from his long career in Hollywood during an interview in 2022, Evans said, “Faith equals daily life. The thing is that you should enjoy it, regardless of the stipulations. If you want to do what we do, do it and enjoy it.“

Charles Shyer

Charles Shyer died on December 27th at the age of 83. After graduating from UCLA, Shyer got a job as an assistant to Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson. “My job was basically to do their Christmas shopping, get their cars washing, shit like that,” he said. Marshall encouraged him to write, which eventually led to Shyer becoming a head writer on The Odd Couple.

He broke into feature films with a rewrite of Smokey and the Bandit. “I’m a guy from Studio City. I never heard of an 18-wheeler radio. I mean, I didn’t know what that was,” Shyer said. “But it was a chance. Burt Reynolds was a big movie star.” From there, Shyer had a hand in writing the scripts for House Calls and Goin’ South, but he hit the big time when he teamed up with Nancy Meyers to write Private Benjamin. The pair soon got married and frequently worked together. “Nancy and I just laughed at the same things,” Shyer said. “We love the same movies, we kind of educate each other on the movies that each of us loved. And Nancy really made me laugh. I think she wrote the best one-liners of anybody I know, except Neil Simon. And, and we were just always in sync — as filmmakers, we had this thing.“

Shyer made his directorial debut on Irreconcilable Differences, which he wrote with Meyers, and went on to write and direct Baby Boom, I Love Trouble, The Affair of the Necklace, Alfie, and more. He also directed Father of the Bride and Father of the Bride Part II after jumping at the chance to work with Steve Martin.

“Steve Martin contacted us. He had seen Baby Boom and really liked it. And there was a script already written that he didn’t love,” Shyer said on the Indie Film Hustle podcast. “We loved Steve so much. And he was in New York. I had never seen the original Father of the Bride. I didn’t even know it existed. It wouldn’t be my kind of movie, necessarily. But we said, ‘Yes. Let’s go meet Steve.’ So we got on the airplane, and I hadn’t read the script yet. Right? I just knew I wanted to direct Steve. I read the script. And I wanted to jump out of the airplane.“

Shyer also co-wrote the script for The Parent Trap alongside Meyers, the last time they officially worked together before their divorce.

Olivia Hussey

Olivia Hussey died on December 27th at the age of 73. She’s best known for starring alongside Leonard Whiting in Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. The film was a big success, but decades later, both Hussey and Whiting filed a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures, accusing the studio of “sexually exploiting them and distributing nude images of adolescent children” due to the nude scenes in the film.

Hussey had previously defended the nude scene, telling Variety in 2018 that “Nobody my age had done that before.” She said Zeffirelli shot it tastefully as it was “needed for the film.” Hussey added, “Everyone thinks they were so young they probably didn’t realize what they were doing. But we were very aware. We both came from drama schools and when you work, you take your work very seriously.“

She’s also known for starring in Black Christmas, one of the early slasher movies which would inspire countless others, including John Carpenter’s Halloween. Hussey appeared in Death on the Nile, The Man with Bogart’s Face, Psycho IV: The Beginning, and Ice Cream Man, as well as TV shows such as Lonesome Dove: The Series, Boy Meets World, Pinky and the Brain, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and more. She also played Audra Phillips Denbrough in the 1990 miniseries based on Stephen King’s It and lent her voice to a few Star Wars video games, including Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Star Wars: Force Commander, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Other notable talents we lost include Battlestar Galactica actor Harry Johnson, Speed Racer actor Christian Oliver, The Cleaning Lady actor Adan Canto, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio co-director Mark Gustafson, Bus Stop actor Don Murray, White Christmas actress Anne Whitfield, Porky’s actor Tony Ganios, Never Say Never Again actress Pamela Salem, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid actor Charles Dierkop, The Empire Strikes Back actor Michael Culver, Return of the Jedi actor Mark Dodson, Oz actor Malachy McCourt, Benji creator Joe Camp, Land of the Lost actor Ron Harper, It Came From Outer Space actress Barbara Rush, The King’s Speech writer David Seidler, 1923 actor Cole Brings Plenty, Rob Roy actor Brian McCardie, Lethal Weapon 3 actor Alan Scarfe, Grease actress Susan Buckner, Game of Thrones actor Ian Gelder, The Godfather casting director Fred Roos, Gomer Pyle actress Elizabeth MacRae, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter actor Erich Anderson, Doctor Who actor William Russell, The French Connection actor Tony Lo Bianco, Grease actor Tony Mordente, Hawaii Five-0 actor Taylor Wily, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives actor Whitney Rydbeck, West Side Story actor Bobby Banas, Seinfeld actress Mitzi McCall, The Godfather Part II actor John Aprea, Scarface actor Ángel Salazar, Law & Order actor Ed Wheeler, The Karate Kid actor Chad McQueen, Frenzy actress Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Doctor Who actor David Graham, Tarzan actor Ron Ely, Baywatch actor Michael Newman, The Illusionist cinematographer Dick Pope, The Warriors actor David Harris, Star Wars poster artist Greg Hildebrandt, songwriter and producer Quincy Jones, One Tree Hill actor Paul Teal, The Slumber Party Massacre actor Michael Villella, The Mod Squad actor Michael Cole, Northern Exposure actress Diane Delano, Workaholics actor Waymond Lee, Alice actor Linda Lavin, and Star Wars actor Angus MacInnes.