As 2023 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 2023. These talented individuals will always be remembered for their impact on the world of film and television.
In Memory Of…
Earl Boen
Earl Boen died at the age of 81 on January 5th. The actor was best known as Dr. Peter Silberman in The Terminator, a role he reprised in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, making him the only other actor aside from Arnold Schwarzenegger to appear in the first three movies.
Boen always wanted to inject a little more humour into his performance, but director James Cameron kept telling him no… with one exception. “We were doing the scene in the hospital hallway, where we tackle Sarah and then Arnold comes in and throws everybody around,” Boen told The Arnold Fans in 2014. “So that was the time where Robert (Patrick) was supposed to melt through the bars. They are doing the shot of me looking at him, you know, shocked at what I’m seeing and Jim stops the scene for a second. He says to me ‘Whats that it your mouth?’ I hadn’t realized that I had the hypodermic needle cap still in my mouth. Jim was like ‘Ok, you wanted some comedy in here…you got it. I want you to drop that thing out of your mouth when you see him come in.’ So I did that and it really turned out to be a great part of the scene. It’s kinda of like Silberman realizes that this story Sarah has been telling has some validity.“
He also appeared in TV shows such as Kojak, Hawaii Five-O, Wonder Woman, Eight Is Enough, The Jeffersons, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Dukes of Hazzard, Benson, M*A*S*H*, Fantasy Island, Family Ties, Punky Brewster, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Empty Nest, Seinfeld, The Golden Girls, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, The West Wing and more, as well as movies such as The Main Event, Battle Beyond the Stars, 9 to 5, the Man with Two Brains, Alien Nation, My Stepmother Is an Alien, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, The Dentist, The Odd Couple II, Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, and more.
Owen Roizman
Owen Roizman died on January 6th at the age of 86. He was best known for his collaborations with William Friedkin, serving as director of photography on The French Connection and The Exorcist. The French Connection was only the second film Roizman had shot. After Friedkin fired his original cinematographer, he hired Roizman after seeing his work on the low-budget drama Stop.
“Friedkin said, ‘I like your work in it; what I want to do … what I want it to be is a realistic street photography sort of thing.’” Roizman told the Los Angeles Times in 2011. “I said, ‘Why not? I should be able to do anything you tell me. I’m a cinematographer.’ He liked my attitude.” The iconic car chase proved tricky, but Roizman pulled it off with flying colours.
“It was done in two different ways,” Roizman said. “Three cameras were used inside the car, including a camera on the dashboard that would look out through the windshield and one over the driver’s shoulder. From the outside, we had five cameras. We broke it down to five stunts, and the rest of it was just bits and pieces. For each of the stunts we had five cameras set up at different angles to cover it all. We only tried to do it once because the car was going to get wrecked. The whole chase, including the interior of the subways, I think was about five weeks.“
Roizman went on to shoot The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Stepford Wives, Three Days of the Condor, Network, Taps, Tootsie, The Addams Family, Wyatt Earp, and more.
Melinda Dillon
In Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Melinda Dillon played Jillian Guiler, a mother whose child is abducted by aliens. She was cast in the role just three days before filming began on the recommendation of Hal Ashby, who had directed her in Bound for Glory. Dillon’s performance would earn her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She also played Ralphie’s mother in Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story, memorably telling him that he would shoot his eye out if he got a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle. She received another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Sydney Pollack’s Absence of Malice, in which she starred alongside Paul Newman and Sally Field as a young woman who takes her own life after a reporter writes a story about her abortion.
After coming to New York City, Melinda Dillion was cast as Honey in the original Broadway production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opposite Uta Hagen, Arthur Hill, and George Grizzard. She told The New York Times that her time in the production was so intense that she had to spend time in a psychiatric hospital. “I was in Virginia Woolf, and I just went crazy; it was really that simple,” Dillon said. “I think it was the way I was living; the play was so long and the actors’ union wouldn’t let us play the matinee. We had to have a whole different cast for that, but I was called in to do it many, many times because the gal would get sick. I would do it three hours in the afternoon, then study with Lee Strasberg for two hours, and do the play three hours at night. Then, George Grizzard left to do Hamlet, and a strange thing happened. I had learned to lean on George hard, and I just crumbled inside. I don’t know why.“
Dillon also appeared in movies such as The Aprils Fools, Slap Shot, F.I.S.T., The Muppet Movie, Songwriter, Harry and the Hendersons, Staying Together, Spontaneous Combustion, Captain America, The Prince of Tides, Sioux City, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, How to Make an American Quilt, Magnolia, and Reign Over Me. Dillon also appeared in TV shows like Bonanza, The Jeffersons, CHiPs, The Twilight Zone, Picket Fences, Judging Amy, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Heartland. She died on January 9th at the age of 83.
Charles Kimbrough
Charles Kimbrough died on January 11th at the age of 86. He was best known for playing network anchor Jim Dial throughout all ten seasons of Murphy Brown; he even returned for a few episodes of the 2018 revival.
Kimbrough was typecast as stuff and fussy characters early on in his career, which troubled him initially. “Unfortunately, I’m really good at playing jackasses of one kind or another,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2012. “I’ve always been slightly self-conscious as an actor, and I guess that sometimes reads as pomposity. Starting when I was 30. I somehow gave off an impression at an audition that had them mentally put me in a three-piece suit or put an attaché case in my hand. If there was a stiff-guy part, the director would brighten up when I came in. That wasn’t the response I wanted. I was in anguish.” The success of Murphy Brown finally allowed him to come to peace with his typecasting, as he realized that “stuffiness is not dullness” and “that gave me a new lease on life.“
He also appeared in TV shows such as Kojak, Spenser: For Hire, Dinosaurs, Family Guy, Ally McBeal, and more, as well as movies such as The Sentinel, Switching Channels, The Good Mother, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Wedding Planner.
Julian Sands
On January 13th, Julian Sands was reported missing while hiking up Mount Baldy in Southern California. It took six months before his remains were found and positively identified. He was 65 years old.
Sands gave a haunting interview with the Radio Time just a few months before his disappearance. “I’ve found spooky things on mountains, when you know you’re in a place where many people have lost their lives, whether it be on the Eiger or in the Andes,” he said. “You may be confronted with human remains and that can be chilling. It’s not necessarily supernatural, it’s possibly all too natural — what I would call hypernatural. You’re in the presence of big nature and big nature is revealing itself in all its power. It can take us over a threshold of hypersensitivity into a realm of natural forces.“
Julian Sands appeared in movies such as The Killing Fields, A Room with a View, Gothic, Warlock, Arachnophobia, Naked Lunch, Boxing Helena, Warlock: The Armageddon, Leaving Las Vegas, The Phantom of the Opera, The Medallion, Ocean’s Thirteen, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and more. He was also featured in episodes of TV shows such as Jackie Chan Adventures, Rose Red, The L-Word, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Stargate SG-1, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Ghost Whisperer, Lipstick Jungle, Smallville, Castle, Dexter, Banshee, Gotham, The Blacklist, and more. He also memorably played Vladimir Bierko in the fifth season of 24.
Lance Kerwin
Lance Kerwin died on January 24th at the age of 62. He was best known for starring in Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot mini-series as Mark Petrie.
“Salem’s Lot was also the first show I was a part of where they weren’t in a rush to get it done,” Kerwin said in a 2019 interview. “In television, you’re on a tight schedule. Time is money. If you get the scene close enough, they’re like, ‘Good enough. Let’s move on. Check the gate. Cut print. Let’s move on. Let’s get to the next scene.’ But with Salem’s Lot, they were like, ‘Hmm, do you think we could do it better? Could we do it differently? Do you have any ideas? Let’s try it again.’“
He also starred in James at 15, a drama series praised for handling sensitive topics and presenting a more realistic depiction of teenagers. He also appeared in episodes of Little House on the Prairie, Gunsmoke, The Family Holvak, Wonder Woman, Trapper John, M.D., Murder, She Wrote, and more, as well as movies such as The Loneliest Runner, The Death of Richie, The Boy Who Drank Too Much, Enemy Mine, and more.
Cindy Williams
Cindy Williams is best known for starring in Laverne & Shirley alongside Penny Marshall. The pair debuted on Happy Days before the choice was made to spin the characters off into their own series. After its release, Laverne & Shirley debuted in the #1 slot and went on to last eight seasons, but Cindy Williams didn’t make it to the end. Toward the end of the seventh season, Williams was pregnant with her first child but didn’t anticipate anything to change. “I thought I was going to come back and they’d hide [her baby bump] behind benches, couches, pillows, and that wasn’t it,” Williams said in 2015. When it came time for Williams to sign her contract, she noticed they had her working on her due date. “I said, ‘You know, I can’t sign this.’ And it went back and forth and back and forth, and it just never got worked out,” Williams said. “Right after that, [shows] would build nurseries on sets.” She sued Paramount for $20 million, and after settling, she was written out of the series just two episodes into the eighth season.
Cindy Williams is also known for playing Laurie Henderson in George Lucas‘ American Graffiti, but she almost didn’t take the role, only agreeing to do so after producer Francis Ford Coppola convinced her to. “I said, ‘This is not going to be fun, I’m going to cry during this whole 28-night shoot,’ and I did,” Williams recalled. “But after two weeks, George Lucas took [the whole cast] into the editing bay, and he showed us a 20-minute assemblage of the film with music. I remember Harrison Ford standing next to me and saying, ‘This is [bleeping] great.’” She would reprise the role for More American Graffiti and also appeared in movies such as Beware! The Blob, The Conversation, Mr. Ricco, Bingo, Meet Wally Sparks, and more. She also appeared in TV shows like Love, American Style, Hawaii Five-O, Cannon, Police Story, CHiPs, Getting By, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Touched by an Angel, 7th Heaven, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and more. Cindy Williams died on January 25th at the age of 75.
Annie Wersching
Annie Wersching made her TV acting debut on an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise but didn’t know anything about the franchise. “I’d only done theater up until then, and I didn’t know anything about Star Trek. I tried to learn a little bit, but I was literally starting on the show the next day,” Wersching said in a 2022 interview. “I was a huge Quantum Leap fan growing up, so I was really excited to work with Scott Bakula [Captain Archer]. I can remember saying to Connor Trinneer [Trip], “I’ve only done theatre. If I’m doing things way too big, or making a fool of myself, please feel free to give me a little heads up and let me know.” Her Star Trek experience came full circle when she was cast as the Borg Queen in the second season of Star Trek: Picard twenty years later.
She also appeared in episodes of Frasier, Angel, Charmed, Cold Case, Boston Legal, Supernatural, General Hospital, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, NCIS, Rizzoli & Isles, Body of Proof, Dallas, Revolution, Castle, Blue Bloods, Extant, The Vampire Diaries, Timeless, Runaways, and The Rookie. She’s best known for playing FBI Special Agent Renne Walker on seasons seven and eight of 24. “I played her the longest,” Wersching said in 2019. “I just spent so much time with her. I went on such a journey with her from being a goody two-shoes FBI agent to being a bad-ass. She was my favorite. I feel like I got to know her the best.” She’s also known for playing Julia Brascher on Bosch and providing the voice and performance capture for Tess on The Last of Us video game. Annie Wersching died on January 29th at the age of 45.
Hugh Hudson
Hugh Hudson died on February 10th at the age of 86. Hudson got his start working alongside Alan Parker, Ridley Scott, and Tony Scott directing television commercials, with his first filmmaking gig finding him serving as a second-unit director on Parker’s Midnight Express. A few years later, he made his feature directorial debut with his most successful film, Chariots of Fire, based on the true story of two British runners competing in the 1924 Olympics.
“I think David Puttnam [the producer] chose me because he sensed I’d relate to the themes of class and racial prejudice,” Hudson said in 2012. “I’d been sent to Eton because my family had gone there for generations, but I hated all the prejudice. The scriptwriter, Colin Welland, a working-class boy from Merseyside, understood it perfectly, too. So it was a personal story for us.” He tasked his friend Vangelis to create the music for the movie, which turned out to be a wise choice as the electronic theme has become iconic. “I knew we needed a piece that was anachronistic to the period to give it a feel of modernity,” Hudson said. “It was a risky idea, but we went with it rather than have a period symphonic score. It’s become iconic film music — perhaps in the top 10 famous soundtracks of all time — which is good because the music is about 30 per cent of a film.” Chariots of Fire was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four, including Best Picture.
Hugh Hudson went on to direct Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, Revolution, Lost Angels, My Life So Far, I Dreamed of Africa, and Altamira.
Raquel Welch
Raquel Welch knew she wanted to be an actress by the time she was seven. “My parents enrolled me in a theater program,” she said. “You could get away from some of the painfulness of real life. I always had flights of fancy.” After a series of minor roles in film and TV, Welch broke out in a big way with her appearances in Fantastic Voyage and One Million Years B.C., which were both released in 1966.
The publicity still of Welch in her two-piece deer skin bikini in One Million Years B.C. became an iconic image, and she was quickly catapulted to sex symbol status, but it was something she was always uncomfortable with. “[I] was not brought up to be a sex symbol, nor is it in my nature to be one,” she said. “The fact that I became one is probably the loveliest, most glamorous and fortunate misunderstanding.“
She appeared in movies such as A Swingin’ Summer, Bedazzled, Bandolero!, 100 Rifles, Myra Breckinridge, Kansas City Bomber, The Three Musketeers, Mother, Jugs & Speed, Legally Blonde and more, as well as TV shows such as McHale’s Navy, Bewitched, The Muppet Show, Mork & Mindy, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Seinfeld, Spin City, and CSI: Miami. Rachel Welch died on February 15th at the age of 82.
Barbara Bosson
Barbara Bosson is best known for playing Fay Furillo on Hill Street Blues, co-created by her then-husband, Steven Bochco.
Bosson appeared in many of her husband’s productions, including Capt. Celeste “C.Z.” Stern, the divorced boss of John Ritter‘s police inspector, in Hooperman, as Los Angeles mayor Louise Plank in Cop Rock, and as prosecutor Miriam Grasso in Murder One. Basson also appeared in TV shows such as Mannix, Emergency!, McMillan & Wife, Richie Brockelman, Private Eye, L.A. Law, Murder, She Wrote, Civil Wars, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, NYPD Blue, Lois & Cark: The New Adventures of Superman, and more. Her role in Hill Street Blues was easily her most acclaimed, with Bosson receiving an Emmy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress five years in a row.
When Bochco was fired from Hill Street Blues after the fifth season, Bosson stayed on the series for several episodes before quitting as well. “I have asked for my release,″ Basson said at the time. “I’m very sad about what they’re doing with Fay. The new producers don’t like the character. Before, my husband always wrote her scenes. I stayed on after he left because I wanted my career to be separate from his. People have always made snide remarks that I was on the show because of Steven.” In addition to her television career, Bosson also appeared in movies such as Bullitt, Capricorn One, and The Last Starfighter. Barbara Bosson died on February 18th at the age of 83.
Richard Belzer
Richard Belzer died on February 19th at the age of 78. He embraced a love of comedy at a young age for an unfortunate reason: to distract his abusive mother from beating him and his brother. “She always had some rationale for hitting us,” Belzer told People in 1993. “My kitchen was the toughest room I ever worked. I had to make my mom laugh or I’d get my ass kicked.“
He is best known for playing Detective John Munch, a role which he first played on Homicide: Life on the Street before reprising on Law & Order, The X-Files, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Trial By Jury, Arrested Development, The Beat, The Wire, and more. “I never asked anyone to be on their show. So it’s doubly flattering to me to see me depicted in a script and that I’m so recognizable and lovable as the sarcastic detective and smart-ass,” Belzer said in a 2008 interview. “Much to my delight, because he is a great character for me to play, it’s fun for me. So I’m not upset about being typecast at all.“
Belzer also memorably found himself knocked out by Hulk Hogan on his short-lived talk show Hot Properties. Hogan and Mr. T were promoting the first WrestleMania and were asked to demonstrate a wrestling move. Hogan put Belzer in a front chin lock, which knocked him unconscious. When he released, he fell to the floor, banging his head. “He came very close to killing me,” Belzer said in 1990. “I was told by a sports medicine expert that if I had fallen a few inches either way I could have been crippled for life, I could have been dead.” He sued for $5 million and settled out of court for $400,000, which he used as a down payment for a home in France.
Ricou Browning
Ricou Browning is best known for playing the Gill-Man during the underwater scenes of Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, and The Creature Walks Among Us.
Browning held his breath for up to four minutes at a time as the Gill-Man. “The lips of the suit sat about a half-inch from my lips, and I put the air hose in my mouth to breathe,” he said in 2019. “I would hold my breath and go do the scene, and I’d have other safety people with other air hoses to give me air if I needed it. We had a signal. If I went totally limp, it meant I needed it. It worked out well, and we didn’t have any problems.” As the scenes were filmed in winter, the water was pretty cold, which led to the crew feeding him shots of brandy throughout the day. “The crew felt sorry for me, so somebody said, ‘How would you like a shot of brandy?’ I said, ‘Sure,’” he said. “Another part of the crew [also] gave me a shot of brandy. Pretty soon they were dealing with a drunk creature.“
Browning also co-wrote Flipper and served as the second unit director and stunt coordinator. He said he came up with the idea when he brought a pair of fresh-water dolphins from South America to Florida. “We brought them back to [a Florida state park in] Silver Springs,” Browning said. “I became their parent, apparently, and took care of them. One day, when I came home, the kids were watching Lassie on TV, and it just dawned on me: ‘Why not do a film about a boy and a dolphin?’” He went on to write and direct over thirty episodes of the Flipper TV series.
He also worked on Thunderball, Around the World Under the Sea, Hot Stuff, Caddyshack, Raise the Titanic, Never Say Never Again, The Heavenly Kid, and more. Ricou Browning died on February 27th at the age of 93.
Tom Sizemore
Tom Sizemore died on March 3rd at the age of 61. Sizemore knew he wanted to be an actor after his father and uncle took him to see Taxi Driver when he was 14. “There was something about the alienation and beauty of actors like Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando and James Dean that captivated me,” Sizemore wrote in his 2013 memoir. “Still, it was more than reverence that I had for them; I somehow already identified with them and saw myself being at their level. … My life had always felt heightened to a degree.”
Unfortunately, the actor also started battling substance abuse problems from a young age, which only worsened as his fame grew. Some, like Robert De Niro, tried to help him. Sizemore told The Independent in 1998 that De Niro arranged for him to enter rehab after he finished shooting Heat. “I watched this guy [De Niro] in the dark when I was 14 and wondered who he was. And here he is,” he said. “I’m in his car and he’s driving me to the airport, he’s telling me that the gig is up, he’s telling me I’m a wonderful actor, that he’s not gonna let me die. ‘I love you,’ he told me, ‘like you’re my son.’ I didn’t wanna go. But I couldn’t say no to him.“
Tom Sizemore appeared in movies such as Blue Steel, Guilty By Suspicion, Point Break, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, Passenger 57, Heart and Souls, True Romance, Striking Distance, Wyatt Earp, Natural Born Killers, Strange Days, Devil in a Blue Dress, Heat, The Relic, Saving Private Ryan, Enemy of the State, Bringing Out the Dead, Get Carter, Red Planet, Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down, Dreamcatcher, Zyzzyx Road, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House, and more. He was also seen in TV shows such as Justice League, Robbery Homicide Division, Dr. Vegas, CSI: Miami, Southland, Entourage, Hawaii Five-0, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Lucifer, Shooter, and Twin Peaks.
Robert Blake
Robert Blake got his start as a child actor, appearing as Mickey in forty installments of MGM’s Our Gang short films. He also played Little Beaver in twenty-three installments of the Red Ryder film series. He also appeared in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as a young Mexican boy who sells a lottery ticket to Humphrey Bogart. Although many child actors had trouble transitioning to adult roles, Blake managed to pull it off. His biggest break came with In Cold Blood, where he played real-life murderer Perry Smith.
Robert Blake went on to appear in movies such as Pork Chop Hill, The Purple Gang, PT 109, The Greatest Story Ever Told, This Property Is Condemned, Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, Corky, Busting, Coast to Coast, Money Train, and more. His final role was that of The Mystery Man in David Lynch’s Lost Highway.
The actor also appeared in TV shows such as Have Gun – Will Travel, Wagon Train, Naked City, Laramie, Rawhide, The F.B.I, and more, but his biggest small-screen role was that of Detective Anthony Vincenzo “Tony” Baretta in Baretta, which earned him an Emmy Award for his performance.
Blake also starred in Hell Town as a hard-living Catholic priest living in a crime-ridden Los Angeles neighbourhood but quit the series after realizing his life was spiralling out of control. “I was living on sleeping pills and junk food,” Blake told The Los Angeles Times in 1992. “I was overweight. My face was puffy and I had old, sad eyes. I would get in the limo to go to the ‘Hell Town’ location every morning and I’d be so uptight I could hardly breathe. My heart hurt, my soul hurt. I’ve always been a fierce competitor and a perfectionist, but during ‘Hell Town’ I only remember being terrified. One morning I realized I was only days–maybe hours–away from sticking a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger.“
Of course, when most think of Robert Blake, they remember the high-profile murder trial in which he was accused of the murder of his life, Bonny Lee Bakley. The couple had been court for dinner at Vitello’s Italian Restaurant, and Bonny was fatally shot in the head while sitting in Blake’s vehicle. The actor claimed that he wasn’t present during the shooting as he claimed he had returned to the restaurant to collect a gun he’d left inside. After a lengthy trial, Blake was found not guilty but was later found liable for the wrongful death of Bonny in a civil case and ordered to pay $30 million. Robert Blake died on March 9th at the age of 89.
Lance Reddick
Lance Reddick died on March 17th at the age of 60. Although he had envisioned a career on the stage and in movies, it was a TV series on HBO that changed everything. “I was never interested in television. I always saw it as a means to an end,” Reddick said in 2011. “Like so many actors, I was only interested in doing theater and film. But ‘Oz’ changed television. It was the beginning of HBO’s reign on quality, edgy, artistic stuff. Stuff that harkens back to great cinema of the ’60s and ’70s.”
From Oz came The Wire, where he played Cedric Daniels, a lieutenant of the Baltimore Police Department’s Narcotics Unit. “I remember reading the script and thinking that I’d never read a pilot like this before,” Reddick said. “To this day, it’s the only pilot I’ve ever read that I thought, ‘I have to be on this show.’” Other TV series featuring Reddick include The Corner, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, CSI: Miami, Lost, Tron: Uprising, American Horror Story, and Resident Evil. He also played Phillip Broyles on Fringe and Deputy Chief Irvin Irving on Bosch.
Lance Reddick also appeared in movies such as The Siege, I Dreamed of Africa, Jonah Hex, White House Down, Oldboy, The Guest, Little Woods, Angel Has Fallen, Godzilla vs. Kong, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, and more. But of course, he’s best known for playing Charon in John Wick, the concierge of The Continental. He reprised the role in John Wick: Chapter 2, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, John Wick: Chapter 4, and will be seen one more time in the upcoming spin-off movie, Ballerina.
Bill Butler
Bill Butler died on April 5th at the age of 101. He was best known for his collaborations with Steven Spielberg, serving as cinematographer on two of the director’s earliest TV movies, Something Evil and Savage. When Butler heard that Spielberg was about to shoot Jaws, he was interested in getting involved. “I said, ‘I hear you’re making a movie about a fish,” Butler said in a 2005 interview. “I had used a handheld 16mm camera while shooting deep sea fishing films for friends, so I had an idea about the freedom that would give us.“
“In the old days of making sea pictures, they used a giant gimbal, which weighs roughly 400 pounds and is slow and hard to set up but does keep the camera level,” Butler said. “I found, just by experimenting, that I could hand-hold the camera on an oceangoing boat and keep it level simply by using my knees. I told Steven that I had this idea about shooting the picture hand-held, and he just fainted.” It worked, and about 90% of the shots on the boat were handheld. “[Camera operator Michael Chapman] was intrigued by the idea and was very good at it,” Butler explained. “We did things that we probably wouldn’t have tried without the lightweight camera. Micahel even climbed the mast and shot from the top straight down.“
Bill Butler also served as the cinematographer on The Return of Count Yorga, The Conversation, Capricorn One, Damien: Omen II, Grease, Rocky II, Stripes, Rocky III, The Sting II, Rocky IV, Biloxi Blues, Child’s Play, Hot Shots!, Anaconda, Frailty, and more.
Michael Lerner
While studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, Michael Lerner shared a flat with Yoko Ono and appeared in some of her experimental films. “She made a movie comprised of bare asses walking on a treadmill,” Lerner said. “I’m in it and so is Paul McCartney. Plus I’m doing the narration about censorship and all that crap.“
He later moved to Los Angeles, appearing in movies such as The Candidate, The Other Side of Midnight, The Postman Always Rings Twice, National Lampoon’s Class Reunion, Strange Invaders, Harlem Nights, Maniac Cop 2, and Omen IV: The Awakening, but he broke out in a big way for his performance as studio mogul Jack Lipnick in Barton Fink. Lerner had auditioned for the Coen Brothers’ previous movie, Miller’s Crossing, but didn’t get the role; this time, he came prepared.
“They said the character was a Michael Lerner type, but they didn’t have me come in until the last minute,” he told Cigar Aficionado magazine in 1999. “I came in and f**king blew them away. I auditioned in character, talking a mile a minute. Joel and Ethan Coen were on the ground, laughing and crying in hysterics, and I just walked out of there. I came in, I did the first big speech and walked out.” His performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Lerner also appeared in movies such as Newsies, Radioland Murders, For Richer or Poorer, Godzilla, My Favorite Martian, Elf, Slipstream, and X-Men: Days of Future Past, as well as TV Shows such as Night Gallery, M*A*S*H, The Rockford Files, The Odd Couple, Kojak, Hill Street Blues, MacGyver, The A-Team, The Equalizer, Clueless, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Glee, and more. Michael Lerner died on April 8th at the age of 81.
Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte died on April 25th at the age of 96. After starting his career as a club singer to pay for acting classes, Belafonte broke out in a big way with the release of Calypso, which became the first album to sell more than a million copies in the U.S.
His signature song was Day-O, also known as the Banana Boat Song, and Belafonte told NPR that his performance was inspired by singing street vendors. “The song is a work song,” he said. “It’s about men who sweat all day long, and they are underpaid. They’re begging for the tallyman to come and give them an honest count: ‘Count the bananas that I’ve picked so I can be paid.’ When people sing in delight and dance and love it, they don’t really understand unless they study the song — that they’re singing a work song that’s a song of rebellion.“
While primarily known as a singer and civil rights activist, Harry Belafonte also appeared in a number of movies, including Carmen Jones, Island in the Sun, The World, the Flesh and the Devil, Odds Against Tomorrow, Buck and the Preacher, Uptown Saturday Night, The Player, Ready to Wear, White Man’s Burden, Kansas City, Bobby, and BlacKkKlansman.
Barry Newman
Barry Newman died on May 11th at the age of 92. Newman is best known for playing Kowalski in Vanishing Point, the 1971 action movie which followed a Vietnam War vet and former race car driver tasked with delivering a muscle car across the country while high on speed and being chased by cops.
“This was very unique,” Newman said in a 2013 interview. “I had just done this film about a lawyer, a Harvard graduate, and I thought this is a different kind of thing. The guy was the rebel, the antihero. I enjoyed doing that very much.” Although the film wasn’t a big success in the U.S. upon release, it was a smash hit in London, with “people lined up around the block to see it. In England, I was a hero, and in America, I was just a guy picking up his bags at the plane terminal. It opened again in America after playing Europe and people then started getting on to the film. It became a cult film without me even realizing it. To this day, I’m always being asked to talk about it somewhere.” Steven Spielberg even considers Vanishing Point to be one of his favourite movies.
Barry Newman also appeared in movies such as The Salzburg Connection, City on Fire, Daylight, Goodbye Lover, The Limey, Bowfinger, 40 Days and 40 Nights, What the Bleep Do We Know?, and more. He also played Tony Petrocelli in The Lawyer, a role which he reprised for the TV series Petrocelli. The legal drama aired for two seasons and earned Newman nominations for Emmy and Golden Globe Awards. He also appeared in Naked City, Get Smart, The Fall Guy, Murder, She Wrote, L.A. Law, NYPD Blue, The O.C. Ghost Whisperer, and more.
Ray Stevenson
Although Ray Stevenson already had a handful of movies and TV shows under his belt, he broke out in a significant way thanks to his role as Titus Pullo on HBO’s Rome. The series gave him his SAG card, which allowed his career to take off. “Over the course of two seasons I created quite a bit of interest, and that gave me my representation in the States and, ergo, started my movie career at 44—which is almost unheard of,” Stevenson said in a 2020 interview.
After Rome, Stevenson went on to appear in Dexter, Black Sails, Rellik, Medici, The Spanish Princess, Vikings, Das Boot, and more. He also voiced Gar Saxon in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels but made the leap to live action in Ahsoka. Stevenson played Baylon Skoll, a Dark Jedi searching for a secret power in another galaxy. The role was a dream come true for Stevenson. “Getting to wield the light saber is just the best feeling in the world,” he said. “The first time they handed it to me for the camera test, I couldn’t help myself, I made the noise.“
Stevenson also appeared in movies such as King Arthur, Outpost, Punisher: War Zone, The Book of Eli, The Other Guys, The Three Musketeers, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, RRR, Memory, and more. He also played Volstagg in Thor, Thor: The Dark World, and Thor: Ragnarok, as well as Marcus Eaton in Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant. Ray Stevenson died on May 21st at the age of 58.
Tina Turner
Tina Turner died on May 24th at the age of 83. Although best known for hit songs such as What’s Love Got to Do with It, (Simply) The Best, Better Be Good to Me, I Don’t Wanna Fight, and more, Turner made a big impact in the world of cinema with her portrayal of Aunty Entity in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Aunty Entity ruled a settlement called Bardertown where conflicts are resolved by a fight to the death in a gladiator arena known as Thunderdome. In a 2021 interview, Turner said she brought a lot of her own experiences to the character. “I brought my real-life experiences to ‘Mad Max!’” Turner said “I had gone through some dangerous and destructive periods, especially during my first marriage and that messy divorce. So, for ‘Mad Max,’ my sense of independence, self-reliance and hard work ethic made their way into that role.” Turner also sang We Don’t Need Another Hero for the soundtrack.
Mel Gibson also credits Turner with helping turn his life around during that period. “I was a wild boy, I used to get loaded,” Gibson said in a 2017 interview. “She sent me a photograph of myself one time and said, ‘Please don’t mess this up.’ She was worried about me. I was touched by that… that went in somewhere.” Tina Turner also played The Acid Queen in Tommy and the Mayor in Last Action Hero. She also performed the theme song for Goldeneye, which relaunched the James Bond franchise with Pierce Brosnan.
Treat Williams
Treat Williams got his start on the stage, with one of his first big roles being Danny Zuko in the Broadway production of Grease. He played the role for three years, and it was the first time he thought he’d made it. “I had grown up learning all of the songs from West Side Story, so I was aware of what a big deal ‘Broadway’ was,” Williams said in a 2021 interview. “When I got my first little dressing room at the Royale Theatre up on the sixth floor looking down on 45th Street, I thought, ‘I’ve arrived. I’m here. This is fantastic!’ I never lost the thrill that I would get from arriving at the theatre and getting ready for a show.“
Williams broke out on the big screen playing George Berger in Miloš Forman’s adaptation of Hair, but it took an unorthodox audition to land him the role. “It was my twelfth audition. I had to do the monologue from the theatre version, because there was no monologue in the movie,” Williams said. “I had the monologue memorized, so I went in to do the audition with confidence. As I started the monologue, I started removing all of my clothing. At the end of the monologue, I was standing stark naked in front of them. After the monologue, they applauded, and I told them, ‘This is all that I’ve got, I don’t know what else I can give you.’ Miloš came up to me after I walked out and told me that he was going to give me the part. That was the final audition, and I finally had the part.“
Treat Williams also appeared in movies such as The Eagle Has Landed, 1941, The Empire Strikes Back, Prince of the City, Once Upon a Time in America, Mulholland Falls, The Phantom, Deep Rising, The Deep End of the Ocean, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, What Happens in Vegas, 127 Hours, and more. He also starred in The Substitute 2: School’s Out, The Substitute 3: Winner Takes All, and The Substitute: Failure Is Not an Option as Karl Thomasson, a mercenary who masquerades as a teacher.
He was also featured in TV shows such as Eddie Dodd, Tales from the Crypt, Brothers & Sisters, Heartland, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Simpsons, White Collar, Chicago Fire, Hawaii Five-0, Blue Bloods, and We Own This City but is best known for playing Dr. Andrew “Andy” Brown on Everwood. Treat Williams died on June 12th at the age of 71.
Nicolas Coster
Nicolas Coster was best known for his many soap opera appearances, playing roles in The Secret Storm, Our Private World, Another World, As the World Turns, and The Bay. However, he is best known for playing Lionel Lockridge on Santa Barbara.
After a four-year run, he requested to be written out of the series after a disagreement over a storyline in which his character faked his death. “I thought it was tasteless, disgusting and impossible. To expect Lionel to witness his own children really grieving over a fake death and not react with guilt and horror (and TELL them !) was not possible,” Coster said in 2009. “With all Lionel’s faults he was not sadistically nuts ! I told the producer so and that if he insisted on it, I would have to leave. My contract at the time enabled me to do so. He did not believe I had such a provision, but after checking, I was allowed to bow out. He was most gracious ultimately.” Coster returned to the series in 1990 when the original producers took control of the show.
Coster also appeared in TV Shows such as Naked City, The Green Hornet, Charlie’s Angels, Little House on the Prairie, Baretta, The Rockford Files, The Incredible Hulk, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Dallas, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, Police Squad!, T.J. Hooker, Knight Rider, The Facts of Life, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Law & Order, 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Bay, Lessons in Chemistry, and more, as well as movies such as All the President’s Men, MacArthur, The Concorde… Airport ’79, Stir Crazy, Reds, The Last Exorcist, and more. Nicolas Coster died on June 26th at the age of 89.
Alan Arkin
Alan Arkin died on June 29th at the age of 89. Arkin began his career as the singer and guitarist in The Tarriers, a folk group with two hits, Cindy, Oh Cindy and The Banana Boat Song. After the group appeared in Calypso Heat Wave, Arkin decided to try acting and joined the Second City improv group in the 1960s.
“I was afraid I was going to get fired for the first month or two,” Arkin said in a 2012 interview regarding his time with Second City. “I couldn’t be funny. I didn’t know how to be funny. I didn’t think I was going to make it. There was no place I thought of I could go if I didn’t make it there, so I worked and I worked and I worked, and I finally came up with a character that got laughs. And I hung onto that character like a lifeline. Then I got secure enough with that, so I started developing a library of characters around him. And when I played them, I got laughs. … I finally reached the point where I could do it not with extreme characters, but closer and closer to myself. But it took a long time.“
Arkin made the leap to the big screen soon after, achieving acclaim for his leading role in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He went on to appear in Inspector Clouseau, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Freebie and the Bean, The In-Laws, The Last Unicorn, Edward Scissorhands, The Rocketeer, Glengarry Glen Ross, So I Married an Axe Murderer, North, Grosse Pointe Blank, Gattaca, Little Miss Sunshine, Sunshine Cleaning, Get Smart, Marley & Me, Argo, Dumbo, Spenser Confidential, and more. He starred in the first two seasons of The Kominsky Method alongside Michael Douglas.
Manny Coto
Manny Coto died on July 9th at the age of 62. After starting his career in Los Angeles working in commercials, Coto found success with The Ticking Man, a screenplay he co-wrote with Brian Helgeland about a bomb squad officer pursuing a cyborg equipped with a nuclear weapon. The script sold for $1 million but was never produced.
Coto went on to write episodes of Tales from the Cryptkeeper, The Outer Limits, Dexter, American Horror Story, American Horror Stories, and more. He later became the executive producer for the last four seasons of 24, writing over two dozen episodes, and returned for 24: Live Another Day and 24: Legacy. Coto also created Odyssey 5, a sci-fi series starring Peter Weller, and Next, a sci-fi crime drama series starring John Slattery. Coto also directed a few movies, including Dr. Giggles, the cult slasher starring Larry Drake.
He also joined the writers’ room of Star Trek: Enterprise in the third season and was elevated to showrunner of the fourth and final season, which was received well by fans who appreciated the multi-episode arcs and connections to the Original Series.
“I wanted to tell more complex stories,” Coto said in a 2014 interview. “One of the first things I wanted to do was to tell stories in three-episode arcs, where we could actually create little mini-feature films. Television has become… an episode is now 42 minutes of actual content. It’s very hard to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end when you only have 42 minutes. The Original Series, they had 50 minutes. They had almost an hour to tell a story. That makes a difference. I wanted to tell epic tales, so we had to tell them over more than just a 42-minute period. So we came up with the idea of doing two- or three-episode arcs. And I wanted to tell more sweeping tales that tied into The Original Series, because Enterprise was a prequel and I felt that, at a certain point, the show should begin to tack toward things that we remembered from The Original Series.“
Paul Reubens
Paul Reubens died on July 30th at the age of 70, having kept his cancer diagnosis a secret for six years. “Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’m been facing for the last six years,” Reubens wrote. “I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”
Of course, Paul Reubens is best known for playing Pee-wee Herman. He developed the character during his time with The Groundlings. It was a failed audition for Saturday Night Live which drove Reubens to bet on himself. “The Pee-wee Herman Show actually developed completely out of spite that I didn’t get Saturday Night Live,” Reubens said in a 2004 interview. “I was so upset. And people – I literally was thinking to myself, I’m going to go from this, like, up-and-comer guy to, like, you know, the guy sitting out in front of Rite Aid, like, you know… tugging on your pant leg, going like, you know, can you help me out, without ever having, you know, anything going. So before I even went home, I landed in Los Angeles and called my parents and borrowed some money from them. And probably within two weeks, I had 60 people working for me for free. And we produced that show.“
The stage show rang for five sellout months and the popularity of the quirky character led to his first big-screen movie, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which launched Tim Burton’s career. CBS then approached Reubens with a deal for Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which rang for five seasons. He also reprised the role for two more movies, Big Top Pee-wee and Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday.
Paul Reubens also appeared in movies such as The Blues Brothers, Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie, Meatballs Part II, Flight of the Navigator, Batman Returns, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Matilda, Buddy, Dr. Dolittle, Mystery Men, Blow, The Smurfs, and more. He was also featured in episodes of Murphy Brown, You Don’t Know Jack, Rugrats, Reno 911!, 30 Rock, Pushing Daisies, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Tron: Uprising, Star Wars Rebels, American Dad, The Blacklist, Gotham, Legends of Tomorrow, What We Do in the Shadows, and more.
Angus Cloud
Angus Cloud died on July 31st at the age of 25. The actor is best known for playing Fezco on HBO’s Euphoria, a young drug dealer with a big heart who views Rue (Zendaya) as a little sister. The gig was Cloud’s first acting job, as he was literally picked up off the street for the role by a casting scout. “I was with some friends,” Cloud told Variety in 2022. “We were just hanging out.”
Due to his naturalistic performance, some assumed that Cloud was channelling himself into Fez. “It does bother me,” Cloud said, “when people are like, ‘It must be so easy! You get to go in and be yourself.’ I’m like, ‘Why don’t you go and do that?’ It’s not that simple. I brought a lot to the character. You can believe what you want. It ain’t got nothing to do with me.“
Although Cloud’s career was just beginning, he did appear in a handful of movies, including North Hollywood, The Line, and Your Lucky Day, as well as several upcoming projects, including a Universal Monsters movie directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and Freaky Tales, a drama directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck.
Mark Margolis
Mark Margolis died on August 3rd at the age of 83. He got his start studying with Stella Adler at The Actors Studio, serving as her personal assistant for almost three years in exchange for classes. “She was a god in the classroom, but out on the street she didn’t know which way was uptown!” he recalled in 2012. “I had a real fixation with her. I was 19 years old and she was 60. That’s what a turn-on she was.”
Margolis went on to appear in movies such as Dressed to Kill, Christmas Evil, Scarface, The Cotton Club, Glory, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, The Pit and the Pendulum, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Absolute Power, Pi, Mickey Blue Eyes, Flawless, Jakob the Liar, The Thomas Crown Affair, End of Days, Requiem for a Dream, The Tailor of Panama, Hannibal, Daredevil, The Fountain, Gone Baby Gone, The Wrestler, Black Swan, and more. He also appeared in TV shows like The Equalizer, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Law & Order, Oz, Californication, Blue Bloods, Person of Interest, American Horror Story: Asylum, Gotham, The Blacklist, and Your Honor, but is best known for playing Hector Salamanca on Breaking Bad.
“I was only coming onto Breaking Bad as far as I knew for that one episode, but there’s no accounting for taste, and the fans took a fancy to me,” he said. “Somebody asked me recently, ‘How did you manage to play such a horrible guy?’ and I said, ‘Have you talked to my friends?’ They’ll tell you I’m pretty miserable to begin with.” He went on to reprise the role for the prequel series Better Call Saul.
Arthur Schmidt
Arthur Schmidt died on August 5th at the age of 86. He was best known for his collaborations with director Robert Zemeckis, editing each of his movies over nearly twenty years
“We were very comfortable working together,” Schmidt said of working with Zemeckis. “It just seemed so natural and effortless. He’s a brilliant writer, and always very involved in the scripts of his films. He’s wonderful directing actors, and great in the editing room. We always seemed to be in sync.” Schmidt edited Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II, and Back to the Future Part III, but Who Framed Roger Rabbit proved the trickiest due to the costly animation.
“It was almost like cutting negative,” Schmidt recalled. “I asked if I could have an extra eight frames on every shot, just in case. They said, ‘Absolutely not!’ We didn’t have time to step back and question it. We just kept our fingers crossed that it was gonna work.” He continued to work with Zemeckis on Death Becomes Her, Forrest Gump, Contact, What Lies Beneath, and Cast Away. He also served as editor on Jaws 2, Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Rocketeer, The Last of the Mohicans, Addams Family Values, The Birdcage, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and more.
William Friedkin
William Friedkin died on August 7th at the age of 87. One of Friedkin’s first jobs found him directing an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, but he found himself on the wrong end of the Master of Suspense when he got told off for not wearing a tie on the set. Years later, when he won the Directors Guild Award for The French Connection, he passed Hitchcock in the audience, grabbed his snap-on bow tie and said, “How do you like the tie, Hitch?“
Friedkin made his feature directorial debut with Good Times, a comedy musical western starring Sonny & Cher, which he dubbed “unwatchable.” From there, he helmed movies such as The Birthday Party, The Boys in the Band, The French Connection, Sorcerer, Cruising, To Live and Die in L.A., Rampage, The Guardian, Rules of Engagement, The Hunted, Bug, Killer Joe, and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. He also lent his talents to the small screen on occasion, directing episodes of The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, and CSI, as well as a made-for-TV adaptation of 12 Angry Men.
Friedkin’s biggest success was The Exorcist, and while the film is still regarded as one of the best horror movies of all time, it’s a label Friedkin has consistently rejected. “I think it deals with issues far more profound than what you find in the average horror film,” he said. “To be frank with you, [William Peter Blatty] and I never set out to make a horror film. The idea never crossed our minds. To me, The Exorcist was a story about the mystery of faith, and I tried to depict that as realistically as possible.“
Johnny Hardwick
Johnny Hardwick is best known for voicing Dale Gribble on King of the Hill, but it was a role he almost didn’t play. The character had been offered to Daniel Stern, who exited at the last minute after a dispute over money.
“Apparently, he wanted a whole bunch of money and they weren’t willing to negotiate with him, so I ended up getting the part,” Hardwick said in 1999. “And, you know, it’s pretty much his loss since we’ve been able to renegotiate since then. I don’t think he had the imagination to see what the show could be.” Hardwick gave Dale Gribble his own spin, developing the character into the paranoid conspiracy theorist we all know and love. “I thought that in the pilot [Dale] was written to be pretty dumb — he was mispronouncing things and all kinds of weird stuff,” Hardwick said. “I ended up kind of basing his attitude on if he thought he was Jack Nicholson but he wasn’t, or if he just thought he was the coolest guy around, like Matthew McConaughey’s character in Dazed and Confused. The thing that they did have in Mike’s original pilot was that he was a conspiracy person, which I thought was a great touch.“
In addition to voicing Dale Gribble throughout all thirteen seasons of King of the Hill, Hardwick was also a staff writer, story editor, and producer on the series. He was set to reprise the role for the upcoming King of the Hill revival and had reportedly recorded a few episodes before his death. Johnny Hardwick died on August 8th at the age of 64.
Ron Cephas Jones
Ron Cephas Jones died on August 19th at the age of 66. Best known for playing William “Shakespeare” Hill on This Is Us, the biological father of Sterling K. Brown’s character. During his time on the series, he scored four Emmy nominations and also received a double-lung transplant following a secret battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
“At the end, the caboose, which signifies the end, it’s when William is right there. And he has this beautiful little monologue where you see William’s face light up with this idea that the end is sort of the beginning,” Jones told Variety of his final scene on the series. “And that’s kind of what the monologue is about, just that endings can be beautiful. If you accept them for what they are, they’re not always sad, they can be very beautiful. It’s these little pieces of him throughout the episode, where you feel so much of William without him saying much. It was all very visual and beautiful, almost like a silent movie, in some ways.“
Jones also appeared on TV shows such as Law & Order, Low Winter Sun, The Blacklist, Banshee, Mr. Robot, The Get Down, Luke Cage, Looking for Alaska, Truth Be Told, Lisey’s Story, Law & Order: Organized Crime, Better Things, and the upcoming Genius: MLK/X. He can also be seen in movies such as He Got Game, Half Nelson, Across the Universe, Venom, Dolemite Is My Name, and more.
Bob Barker
“This is Bob Barker reminding you: Help control the pet population, have your pets spayed or neutered.” Those words, or some variation of them, closed nearly every episode of The Price is Right for decades. Bob Barker was a passionate animal rights advocate, donating millions to various causes.
Bob Barker got his big break when game show producer Ralph Edwards heard his radio show while driving his daughters to an ice-skating lesson. Edwards liked Barker’s style and invited him to audition to become the new host of Truth or Consequences. After performing before 11 executives, Barker only got one vote, but said he “got the right one, from Ralph Edwards.” Barker got the job and hosted the show from 1956 to 1975. “It’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me professionally and the greatest thing that ever will,” Barker said.
Barker began hosting The Price is Right in 1972 and continued until 2007, holding the record for the longest-running game show host until it was broken by Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak in 2019. Barker made several memorable appearances outside the long-running game-show series, mostly as himself, in Bonanza, The Nanny, Martial Law, Futurama, Yes, Dear, How I Met Your Mother, Family Guy, and SpongeBob SquarePants, but it’s his role in Happy Gilmore that has cemented itself in pop culture for all time. “Nobody had heard of Adam Sandler until I beat him up,” he joked. Bob Barker died on August 26th at the age of 99.
David McCallum
David McCallum died on September 25th at the age of 90. Born to two musicians, McCallum was encouraged to pursue a music career as well, but he quickly discovered that acting was his true passion.
McCallum found great success playing Ilya Kuryakin on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. His character was originally never intended to be anything more than a minor one, but his popularity quickly exploded, and the producers bumped him up to co-lead alongside Robert Vaughn. “Neither one of us, if we had a thousand ways of betting, would have figured out how we would have become rock stars as a result of a normal show,” Vaughn said of the series. “I have no idea to this day why it happened. The chemistry between the two of us at that time may have never happened again.“
Dubbed the Blond Beatle, McCallum’s legions of fans sometimes proved overwhelming. “I was rescued from Central Park by mounted police once,” he said. “When I went to Macy’s department store, the fans did $25,000 worth of damage, and they had to close Herald Square to get me out. That’s pretty classic, but you just have to deal with it. And then whoever was next came along, and you get dropped overnight, which is a relief.“
McCallum is also known for playing Chief Medical Examiner Donald “Ducky” Mallard on NCIS for twenty seasons. He also appeared in movies such as A Night to Remember, The Great Escape, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Mosquito Squadron, Night of the Lepus, The Wind, and more, as well as TV shows like Night Gallery, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Invisible Man, Murder She Wrote, seaQuest DSV, Babylon 5, Law & Order, The Outer Limits, Sex and the City, and more.
Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon died on September 28th at the age of 82. After making his debut on the stage, Gambon took to the big screen with Othello, starring alongside Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, and Derek Jacobi.
He was once considered for the role of James Bond after George Lazenby exited the role, even meeting with Cubby Broccoli, but the actor talked himself out of it, explaining that he was “bald, fat, and had girls tits.” Gambon went on to appear in movies such as The Beast Must Die, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Mobsters, Toys, Mary Reilly, The Wings of the Dove, The Insider, Sleepy Hollow, Gosford Park, Open Range, Sylvia, Being Julia, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Layer Cake, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Omen, The Good Shepherd, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Book of Eli, The King’s Speech, Paddington, Hail, Caesar!, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Paddington 2, King of Thieves, and more.
Of course, he’s best known for taking on the role of Professor Albus Dumbledore following the death of Richard Harris. He first appeared in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and went on to play the role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and the two-part Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. No one was safe from his practical jokes on set, not even Daniel Radcliffe. “On my first Potter film, the director and I shoved a fart machine in Harry Potter’s sleeping bag,” Gambon said in 2007. “He had his eye on one of the extra girls and asked, ‘Can she be in the next sleeping bag to me in this scene?’ She was a beautiful girl playing a non-speaking part so we agreed. I had the controller, and as soon as he wakes up in the Great Hall, I pressed the button. It destroyed his credibility with her.“
Burt Young
Burt Young died on October 8th at the age of 83. After lying about his age, Young joined the U.S. Marines and served from 1957 to 1959. He boxed during this time, winning 32 of 34 fights. When he got out, he worked as a carpet cleaner, salesman, and installer, but a girl led him into the world of acting.
“What happened is that I was chasing a girl and she [said she] wanted to study with Lee Strasberg. I thought he [Strasberg] was a girl,” Young said in 1985. “Anyway, I met him and he told me, ‘You’re very tense. You have huge tension about you. I feel you’re an emotional library.’” Young went on to appear in movies such as Carnival of Blood, Chinatown, The Gambler, The Killer Elite, Convoy, Uncle Joe Shannon, Blood Beach, Amityville II: The Possession, Once Upon a Time in America, The Pope of Greenwich Village, A Summer to Remember, Back to School, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Micky Blue Eyes, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power, Transamerica, and more. He also appeared in TV shows such as M*A*S*H, Baretta, Miami Vice, Airwolf, The Equalizer, Tales from the Crypt, Columbo, Walker, Texas Ranger, The Outer Limits, The Sopranos, and more.
He’s best known for playing Paulie Pennino in Rocky, a role which he reprised in Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Rocky V, and Rocky Balboa. His performance in the first movie earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. “They sent me the script. It was very low budget. I read it. I didn’t know who Stallone was. I read it and thought it was probably the most brilliant script I ever read,” Young said in 2007. “I went to California and was dragging my feet trying to get a couple of dollars from them which they didn’t have. Stallone comes to me and says, ‘Mr. Young. I am Sly Stallone. I wrote Rocky.’ I said, ‘Well kid congratulations, it was wonderful. You did great.’ ‘You gotta do the movie.’ I am gonna do it. Let me twist their arm and try to get some dollars.’ He smiled like a pumpkin and that was the beginning.“
Mark Goddard
Mark Goddard died on October 10th at the age of 87. When Goddard’s agent pitched Lost in Space to him, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be involved. “I said, ‘Gee, I don’t know, I’m not sure, because of the subject matter.’” Goddard said in Tom Weaver’s book They Fought in Creature Features. “And [Goddard’s agent] said, ‘Well, listen, you just do it and don’t worry about it. Take the money. Because nobody’s gonna see it and it’ll never sell.’” When Goddard first saw himself in his silver spacesuit, he wrote in his memoir, To Space and Back, that he had to take a deep breath and wonder, “How the hell did this happen?“
Lost in Space lasted for three seasons before it was cancelled, likely due to its high cost, but it remained popular in syndication. It later spawned a big-screen movie in 1998 in which Goddard’s role was played by Matt LeBlanc. Netflix also developed a reimagining of the series, which wrapped up its three-season run in 2021. The character of Don West was played by Ignacio Serricchio in that series.
In addition to Lost in Space, Mark Goddard also starred in Johnny Ringo as Cully, the deputy to the title character. He also played Sgt. Chris Ballard in The Detectives for three years. He also made appearances in The Rifleman, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Virginian, Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, The Fugitive, The Mod Squad, Barnaby Jones, General Hospital, and more. He also made a cameo in the Lost in Space movie along with several other members of the original cast.
Piper Laurie
Piper Laurie made her film debut in Louisa alongside Ronald Regan, whom she even dated a few times before the future President married Nancy. She had signed a contract with Universal, who told the press that the young actress bathed in milk and ate flower petals to protect her skin, but she soon became discouraged by the types of roles she was given.
She told her agent to get her out of her contract. “They can throw me in jail, sue me, I don’t care what it is,” Laurie said in 1990. “I’m never working again until I can do something that I have some respect for.” She moved to New York but was lured back to Hollywood to star alongside Paul Newman in The Hustler, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. It would be well over a decade before she starred in another movie, but it would become the one she’s best known for — Carrie. “I loved [Carrie], because I think that Brian De Palma brought a joyful sensibility to it, there was all that freshness,” Laurie said. “Even though it was about a lot of misery, there was still joy in all of those young people, in all the characters. There was flamboyance about Brian De Palma’s work, I think.“
Laurie appeared in movies such as The Prince Who Was a Thief, Has Anybody Seen My Gal?, Son of Ali Baba, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Ruby, Return of Oz, Children of a Lesser God, Dream a Little Dream, Trauma, The Faculty, Eulogy, and White Boy Rick, as well as TV shows such as Naked City, The Thorn Birds, St. Elsewhere, Murder, She Wrote, The Twilight Zone, Matlock, Frasier, ER, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Dead Like Me, and more. She’s best known for playing Catherine Martell on David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, but she also played “Mr. Tojamura,” a disguised version of her original character, which was kept a secret from the rest of the cast and crew. “The cast would never come very close to me,” Laurie said. “They were told to be respectful to this actor who had come over from Japan specifically for the show and had only worked with [Akira] Kurosawa.” Piper Laurie died on October 14th at the age of 91.
Suzanne Somers
Suzanne Somers died on October 15th at the age of 76. Somers is best known for playing Chrissy Snow on Three’s Company alongside John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt.
Three’s Company was a big success, but at the start of the fifth season, Somers demanded a substantial increase in her salary, from $30,000 to $150,000. Producers refused, so Somers went on a strike of sorts. However, as Somers was still under contract, she did continue to appear in brief scenes at the end of a handful of episodes before she was written out entirely. “The night before we went in to renegotiate, I got a call from a friend who had connections high up at ABC, and he said, ‘They’re going to hang a nun in the marketplace, and the nun is Suzanne,’” Somers’ husband and manager, Alan Hamel, told THR in 2015. “The network was willing to do this because earlier that year the women on Laverne & Shirley had gotten what they asked for, and they wanted to put a stop to it. They’d destroy the chemistry on Company to make a point.“
In addition to Three’s Company, Somers is best known for playing Hildy Granger on She’s the Sheriff and Carol Foster Lambert on Step by Step. She also appeared on TV shows such as The Rockford Files, One Day at a Time, The Love Boat, Starsky and Hutch, The Six Million Dollar Man, Hollywood Wives, The Larry Sanders Show, and The Simpsons, as well as movies such as American Graffiti, It Happened at Lakewood Manor, Serial Mom, The Nutty Professor, and more.
Richard Roundtree
“Who’s the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks?” If you answered Shaft, well, you’re damn right. Richard Roundtree exploded in popularity after playing John Shaft in the 1971 movie, reprising the role in Shaft’s Big Score, Shaft In Africa, and a short-lived Shaft TV series. He also returned for the 2000 sequel/reboot starring Samuel L. Jackson and once more in the 2019 sequel starring Samuel L. Jackson and Jessie T. Usher.
Due to the success of Shaft, Roundtree found himself typecast for some time, but he grew to appreciate his iconic role and its impact on the world. “I used to look at it as a double-edged sword. But I’ve had so many people from all over the country — and all over the world actually — come up and say what that film meant to them back in ’71,” Roundtree said in 2019. “It’s heavy. And I’m appreciative of people speaking to me and sharing that with me. The other side of it is I got typecast for quite some time, and then I’ve gone out of my way to establish a different side of my acting.” His father also set him right: “My dad said to me once, he was out visiting me in LA and I was complaining about [how] 24/7, the Shaft character comes up, and he says, ‘Son, let me tell you something. A lot of people leave this Earth not being known for anything. Shut up.’“
Roundtree also appeared in movies such as Embassy, Earthquake, Man Friday, Escape to Athena, An Eye for an Eye, Q: The Winged Serpent, One Down, Two to Go, The Big Score, Maniac Cop, Angel III: The Final Chapter, Amityville: A New Generation, Se7en, Theodore Rex, George of the Jungle, Steel, Corky Romano, Brick, Speed Racer, What Men Want, and more. He’s also credited for helping break the stigma of breast cancer in men when he went public after being diagnosed with the disease in 1993 after having a double mastectomy. “Breast cancer is not gender specific,” he said. “And men have this cavalier attitude about health issues. I got such positive feedback because I spoke out about it, and it’s been quite a number of years now. I’m a survivor.” Richard Roundtree died on October 24th at the age of 81.
Richard Moll
Richard Moll died on October 26th at the age of 80. Although Moll is best known for playing Aristotle Nostradamus “Bull” Shannon on all nine seasons of Night Court, he had quite a sprawling filmography.
He made appearances in movies such as Cavemen, Evilspeak, The Sword and the Sorcerer, The Dungeonmaster, Night Train to Terror, House, Wicked Stepmother, Sidekicks, Loaded Weapon 1, The Flintstones, Jingle All the Way, Scary Movie 2, and more. He was also featured in episodes of Happy Days, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, T.J. Hooker, Remington Steele, The Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team, Highlander: The Series, Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman, Hercules: The Legendary Adventures, Babylon 5, Baywatch, Married… with Children, Smallville, and more.
Moll also had a prolific voice-over career, lending his voice to episodes of Mighty Max, The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, Justice League, and more. He also voiced Harvey Dent/Two-Face in multiple episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures, and Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
When Richard Moll auditioned for the role of Bull on Night Court, he was still sporting a shaved head from his role in Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn. Thankfully, the producers loved the look. “They said ‘Richard, the shaved head looks good. Will you shave your head for the part?’” Moll recalled in 2010. “I said, ‘Are you kidding? I’ll shave my legs for the part. I’ll shave my armpits, I don’t care.’“
Matthew Perry
Matthew Perry died on October 28th at the age of 54. Perry grew up in Ottawa, Canada and attended the same school as future Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom he claimed to have beaten up in the fifth grade. “My friend … who was also in the fifth grade in Canada, reminded me that we actually beat up Justin Trudeau,” Perry told Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2017. “We both beat him up. I think he was excelling in a sport that we weren’t, so it was pure jealousy. I think he was the only kid in school that we could beat up. You know, I’m not bragging about this. This is terrible. I was a stupid kid, I didn’t want to beat him up.“
Perry initially didn’t have any dreams of acting. Instead, he was an avid tennis player and even trained to go pro. However, that all changed when he moved to Los Angeles. “Giving up tennis wasn’t really a decision I had to make,” Perry said in 2012. “I was a very good tennis player in Ottawa, Canada — nationally ranked when I was, like, 13. Then I moved to Los Angeles when I was 15, and everyone in L.A. just killed me. I was pretty great in Canada. Not so much in Los Angeles. It was insane. I realized I wouldn’t be playing tennis for a living, so I went for acting.“
After being cast as Chandler Bing on Friends, Perry and the entire cast were catapulted to stardom. “There was steam coming out of my ears, I wanted to be famous so badly,” Perry told the New York Times in 2002. “You want the attention, you want the bucks, and you want the best seat in the restaurant. I didn’t think what the repercussions would be. When [stardom] happens, it’s kind of like Disneyland for a while. For me, it lasted about eight months, this feeling of, ‘I’ve made it, I’m thrilled, there’s no problem in the world.’ And then you realize that it doesn’t accomplish anything, it’s certainly not filling any holes in your life.“
Matthew Perry also appeared in movies such as Getting In, Fools Rush In, Almost Heroes, Three to Tango, The Whole Nine Yards, Serving Sara, The Whole Ten Yards, Numb, and 17 Again, as well as TV shows such as Charles in Charge, Highway to Heaven, Empty Nest, Growing Pains, Who’s the Boss?, Beverly Hills, 90210, The Simpsons, Ally McBeal, The West Wing, Scrubs, Mr. Sunshine, The Good Wife, Go On, Cougar Town, The Odd Couple, The Good Fight, and more.
Marty Krofft
Marty Krofft died on November 25th at the age of 86. Marty joined forces with his brother Sid to develop Les Poupées de Paris, an adults-only musical puppet show which became a huge success. The show toured the United States throughout the ’60s, attracting an audience of millions.
The brothers shifted to more family-friendly fare after they were asked to design costumes for characters on NBC’s The Banana Splits Adventure Hour. The following year, the network asked them to create their own children’s show. The result was H.R. Pufnstuf, following a shipwrecked young boy on a magical island. Some felt the show included references to drug use and that the brothers must have been on drugs themselves to create it, but they always denied the claims. “No drugs involved. You can’t do drugs when you’re making shows. Maybe after, but not during,” Marty said in 2005. “We’re bizarre, that’s all. That was our look, those were the colours, everything we did had vivid colours, but there was no acid involved. That scared me. I’m no goody two-shoes, but you can’t create this stuff stoned.”
NBC was eager for a second season of the show but only offered a small increase, but Sid and Marty declined, and H.R. Pufnstuf came to an end. The brothers went on to develop a variety of children’s programming and variety shows, including The Bugaloos, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, The Krofft Supershow, The Brady Bunch Hour, Barbara Mandrell & the Mandrell Sisters, Pryor’s Place, and more. The brothers also created Land of the Lost, which followed a father and his two children who fall through a time vortex into another universe populated by numerous dangers, including the Sleestaks.
Frances Sternhagen
Frances Sternhagen died on November 27th at the age of 93. After graduating college, Sternhagen taught drama and dance for several years before trying her luck in the theater. “I thought I would try it, see if I liked it, and then get out,” she said in 1981. “But you never get out. It’s an addiction, because it touches your emotions, because it’s where you want to live. … I think those of us who can stay in it are just plain lucky.“
Sternhagen went on to appear in movies such as Starting Over, Independence Day, Outland, Romantic Comedy, Bright Lights, Big City, Communion, Sibling Rivalry, Misery, Doc Hollywood, Raising Cain, The Mist, Julie & Julia, Dolphin Tale, And So It Goes, and more, as well as TV shows such as Spencer, Golden Years, Law & Order, Tales from the Crypt, The Outer Limits, ER, The Simpsons, and The Closer.
She’s best known for playing Esther Clavin, mother of Cliff Clavin on Cheers, and earned two Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress. A decade later, she would receive another Emmy Award nomination for playing Bunny MacDougal on Sex and the City. “I must say it’s fun to play these snobby older ladies. It’s always more fun to be obnoxious,” Sternhagen told The Times in 2002. “I have known women like that, and I can imitate them, I guess.“
Norman Lear
Norman Lear died on December 5th at the age of 101. He served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, flying 52 combat missions.
Upon his return, Lear took inspiration from his uncle for a new career. “My dad had a brother, Jack, who flipped me a quarter every time he saw me,” Lear said. “He was a press agent so I wanted to be a press agent. That’s the only role model I had. So all I wanted was to grow up to be a guy who could flip a quarter to a nephew.” He later teamed up with Ed Simmons to write for Martin and Lewis, Rowan and Martin, and others, and co-created The Deputy, a western TV series starring Henry Fonda.
In 1971, Lear launched the sitcom which catapulted him to fame — All in the Family. The success of that show, often regarded as one of the best TV series of all time, led Lear to develop countless sitcoms throughout the ’70s and ’80s, including Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Diff’rent Strokes, and more.
He also became known for his distinctive white hat, which his second wife gave him so he would stop picking his head during writer’s block. “One day Frances came into my study and threw a little white boating hat on my head to keep me from picking,” Lear wrote in his 2014 memoir. “It worked, and that is how my nearly 50-year love affair with that white hat began.“
Ryan O’Neal
Ryan O’Neal died on December 8th at the age of 82. He first made a name for himself starring as Rodney Harrington on more than 500 episodes of Peyton Place, but he was eager to make the leap to movies.
O’Neal found fame quickly with Love Story, which saw him playing a wealthy college kid who falls for a working-class girl who ultimately succumbs to a rare blood disease. The film was a massive success and remains one of the highest-grossing films of all time adjusted for inflation. After the death of longtime partner Farah Fawcett, O’Neal found watching Love Story to be upsetting. “I lost Farrah to cancer, and I just wonder [why] that played out that way for me,” he said in 2011. “One was just a big deal and so successful, and then in real life it was just the opposite, a tragedy.” O’Neal returned for a sequel, Oliver’s Story, but it didn’t connect.
He also starred in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, which shot for nearly an entire year. O’Neal recalled that Kubrick had a very practical approach to one particular problem they faced towards the end of shooting. “I remember near the end when I had to lose a leg, and we had trouble finding an actor who would be a good double for me,” O’Neal said. “At one point, Stanley said, ‘Why don’t you just lose the leg? It’d be so much simpler.”
O’Neal appeared in movies such as Wild Rovers, What’s Up, Doc?, The Thief Who Came to Dinner, A Bridge Too Far, The Driver, The Main Event, Partners, Irreconcilable Differences, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, and Malibu’s Most Wanted. He also starred alongside his real-life daughter Tatum in Paper Moon. He also appeared in TV shows such as The Untouchables, Laramie, Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, Empire, The Larry Sanders Show, Bull, Miss Match, Desperate Housewives, 90210, and Bones.
André Braugher
André Braugher died on December 11th at the age of 61. After considering a career in medicine, Braugher discovered that “doing a play was more exciting than doing math in the library. Nobody applauds you in the library.“
He made his feature film debut in Glory, playing Cpl. Thomas Searles, and went on to appear in movies such as Primal Fear, City of Angels, Frequency, Poseidon, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, The Mist, Passengers, Salt, The Gambler, She Said, and more. He also appeared in TV shows such as Gideon’s Crossing, The Practice, Hack, Salem’s Lot, The Andromeda Strain, Men of a Certain Age, House, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Last Resort, BoJack Horseman, and The Good Fight.
Braugher also played Detective Frank Pembleton on Homicide: Life on the Street, with showrunner Tom Fontana saying he frequently stole the show. “[The series began] as an ensemble piece. And it became The Andre Braugher Show,” Fontana said in 2014. “All the writers wanted to write for him because he was great and because they wanted to see if they could screw him up, throw him off his game. He could say so much with his eyes. We’d write these incredibly glorious speeches for him, and then you would see him just look at someone, and we’d sometimes go: ‘Drop the monologue. He’s already sold it.’” He reprised the role for Homicide: The Movie as well as an episode of Law & Order.
He also played Captain Raymond Holt on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and although he had plenty of experience playing members of law enforcement, he wasn’t sure he could handle a comedy. “Everything’s new. I’d never done it before. Am I any good?” Braugher said in 2020. “I remember turning to my wife and asking her, ‘Is this funny?’ And she said, ‘Yes, of course, you’re not being deceived.’ But I kept looking at it, saying to myself, is this good? I couldn’t really judge.“
Tom Wilkinson
Tom Wilkinson died on December 30th at the age of 75. After starting his acting career at 18, Wilkinson knew he didn’t want to do anything else. “For the first time in my life, I started doing something I knew how to do,” Wilkinson said. “I realised it wasn’t necessarily just these southern middle-class types that got to be actors; it could possibly be people like me. And once I knew, I never changed my mind.“
The Full Monty gave Wilkinson his breakthrough role. He played stormer steel mill foreman Gerald Arthur Cooper, but he was a role he was advised not to take. He told a friend he had been offered a starring role in a TV show and a possible part in a low-budget movie. “I remember phoning a friend and he said, ‘Take the TV, take the TV.’” Wilkinson said. “But I didn’t follow his advice, and the TV turned out to be crap.” He reprised the role for the Disney TV series released earlier this year.
Wilkinson went on to appear in movies such as In the Name of the Father, Sense and Sensibility, The Ghost and the Darkness, Oscar and Lucinda, The Governess, Rush Hour, Shakespeare in Love, Ride with the Devil, The Patriot, Black Knight, The Importance of Being Earnest, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Ripley Under Ground, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, RocknRolla, Michael Clayton, Valkyrie, Duplicity, 44 Inch Chest, The Ghost Writer, The Green Hornet, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Lone Ranger, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Selma, Snowden, and more. He also played mob boss Carmine Falcone in Batman Begins and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for In the Bedroom.
Other notables we lost this year include Eight is Enough actor Adam Rich, The Lucy Show actress Carole Cook, Bread, Love and Dreams actress Gina Lollobrigida, Passions actor Ben Masters, The Wire actor Al Brown, McHale’s Navy actor James Yoshio Yoda, The Addams Family actress Lisa Loring, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers actor George P. Wilbur, In the Heat of the Night producer Walter Mirisch, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery actor and composer Burt Bacharach, The Nutty Professor actress Stella Stevens, Away From Her actor Gordon Pinsent, animator and Disney Legend Burny Mattinson, Fiddler on the Roof actor Chaim Topol, Blazing Saddles writer Norman Steinberg, The New Perry Mason actress Sharon Acker, As The World Turns actress Elizabeth Hubbard, comedian Barry Humpries aka Dame Edna, TV host Jerry Springer, Amadeus actress Barbara Bryne, Saved by the Bell actor Gerald Castillo, General Hospital actress Jacklyn Zeman, Hell on Wheels co-creator Joe Gayton, It’s Alive actress Sharon Farrell, NFL star and Any Given Sunday actor Jim Brown, Men in Black actor Sergio Calderón, wrestler Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri aka The Iron Sheik, No Country for Old Men author Cormac McCarthy, The Young and the Restless actor Brett Hadley, A Touch of Class actress Glenda Jackson, Friends actor Paxton Whitehead, The Robe actress Betta St. John, Apocalypse Now actor Frederic Forrest, The Graduate producer Lawrence Turman, D3: The Mighty Ducks director Robert Lieberman, One Life to Live actress Andrea Evans, Sixteen Candles actress Carlin Glynn, Days of Our Lives actor Nick Benedict, Rolling Thunder actress Linda Haynes, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore actress Lelia Goldoni, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest co-writer Bo Goldman, singer Sinéad O’Connor, Jaws 2 actor Marc Gilpin, Benson actress Inga Swenson, Killers of the Flower Moon composer Robbie Robertson, Stargate SG-1 actress Elizabeth Hoffman, Little House on the Prairie actress Hersha Parady, Batman: The Animated Series actress Arleen Sorkin, Weekend at Bernie’s writer Robert Klane, musician Jimmy Buffett, The House of Mirth director Terence Davies, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth director Anthony Hickox, Texas Chainsaw Massacre III director Jeff Burr, Superman and the Mole Men actress Phyllis Coates, Dark Shadows actress Lara Parker, The Boys in the Band actor Peter White, Star Trek pilot director Robert Butler, CSI: Miami actor Evan Ellingson, The Sopranos actress Suzanne Shepherd, Cat Ballou director Elliot Silverstein, Dog Day Afternoon cinematrapher Victor J. Kemper, Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor Camden Toy, Godzilla performer in the Heisei films Kenpachiro Satsuma, Wish You Were Here director David Leland, comedian Tom Smothers of The Smothers Brothers, Parasite actor Lee Sun-kyun, and The Sopranos actor Richard Romanus.
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