And as another year comes to a close, we stop to think about the people who are no longer with us. We did full obituaries for Milos Forman and Stan Lee were done at the time of their passing, but there were many people whom we were unable to pay tribute to at the time of their deaths. So here we pay tribute to some of the stars- from both in front of and behind the camera- who sadly passed away this year.
London-born director Michael Anderson was nominated for the Best Director Oscar for Around The World In Eighty Days (1956)- featuring a star-studded cast led by David Niven- which won Best Picture at the 1957 Oscars ceremony. He also directed Will Any Gentleman...? (1953), The Dam Busters (1955), All The Fine Young Cannibals (1960), The Quiller Memorandum (1966) and Logan's Run (1976).
Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci won the Best Director Oscar and a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for his work on The Last Emperor (1987). He worked as an assistant director with Pier Paolo Pasolini before moving on to directing himself. He was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for his second feature, Before The Revolution (1964) and also nominated for Best Director for the controversial Last Tango In Paris (1972) which starred Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. Bertolucci's other films include Little Buddha (1993), Stealing Beauty (1996) and The Dreamers (2003).
Reg E. Cathey had a varied career in both film and television. On TV, he had recurring roles in House Of Cards, The Wire, and Oz. His filmography takes in such diverse work as The Mask (1994), Se7en (1995), Tank Girl (1995), The Machinist (2004), St. Vincent (2014), and Fantastic Four (2015) in which he played Dr. Franklin Storm. He also made an uncredited appearance as flamboyant promoter Don King in boxing biopic Hands Of Stone (2016).
As co-founder of Golden Harvest production company, Raymond Chow was responsible for producing some of the biggest films in the martial arts genre and bringing martial arts stars such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan to the wider world. Chow produced over 170 films during his career, including Way Of The Dragon (1972), Enter The Dragon (1973), Game Of Death (1978), ZU: Warriors From The Magic Mountain (1983), Cannonball Run II (1984), Police Story (1985), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), and Rumble In The Bronx (1995).
Film editor Anne V. Coates had a long and very varied career which spanned seven decades. She edited such diverse films as Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines (1965), Murder On The Orient Express (1974), Masters Of The Universe (1987), Striptease (1996), Erin Brockovich (2000), The Golden Compass (2007) and Fifty Shades Of Grey (2015). She won an Academy Award for her work on Lawrence Of Arabia (1962) and would be nominated four more times- for Becket (1964), The Elephant Man (1980), In The Line Of Fire (1993), and Out Of Sight (1998). She received an honorary Academy award in 2017, and was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship in 2007.
Former Marine-turned-actor R. Lee Ermey unsurprisingly excelled in military roles, making his film debut in 1978 in The Boys In Company C, and making an uncredited appearance as a helicopter pilot in Apocalypse Now (1979). However, it will be as the ferociously foul-mouthed Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987) that Ermey will be best remembered. Nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe for his performance, Ermey reportedly ad-libbed many of his lines (virtually unheard of in a Kubrick film). He also appeared in Mississippi Burning (1989), Se7en (1995), the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), and The Watch (2012). He also provided the voice of toy soldier Sarge in the Toy Story movies.
John Gavin will probably be best remembered for two roles: Sam Loomis, the lover of Marion Crane, in Psycho (1960), and Julius Caesar in the epic Spartacus (1960). Other film roles include A Time To Love And A Time To Die (1958), Imitation Of Life (1959), and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967). He was officially signed up to replace George Lazenby as James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) but the producers met Sean Connery's salary request and replaced Gavin at the last minute. In the 1980s, Gavin retired from acting and moved into politics, becoming Ronald Reagan's Ambassador to Mexico.
Eunice Gayson has the distinction of being the first 'Bond girl'. Playing the seductive Sylvia Trench in Dr. No (1962), she asks the handsome card player opposite her his name: the answer 'Bond. James Bond'. Gayson had originally auditioned and was to be cast as Miss Moneypenny, but the role went to Lois Maxwell instead. She made a second appearance as Sylvia in From Russia With Love (1963) and was originally meant to be a regular character- a mission from M being the cause of their romantic travails being curtailed- but was dropped from Goldfinger as incoming director Guy Hamilton didn't like the idea. Outside her roles in the Bond films, she also appeared in Melody In The Park (1949) and The Revenge Of Frankenstein (1958)
Director Lewis Gilbert was originally a child actor before moving behind the camera, working as an assistant on Jamaica Inn (1939), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He directed the biopic Reach For The Sky (1956) which starred Kenneth More as war hero Douglas Bader, and in 1966, he directed Alfie, starring Michael Caine in the title role. He also directed three Bond films: You Only Live Twice (1967), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979). He reunited with Caine when he directed Educating Rita (1983) and also directed Pauline Collins to a Best Actress Oscar nomination for the lead role in Shirley Valentine (1989). He directed his last film, Before You Go, in 2002.
Screenwriter William Goldman was responsible for some of the finest Hollywood screenplays throughout his six-decade-long career. He made his screenplay debut in 1965 with Masquerade, and went on to write The Stepford Wives (1975), Marathon Man (1976), Magic (1978), Misery (1990), Chaplin (1992), Absolute Power (1997) and Dreamcatcher (2003) amongst others. He won two Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars for Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969) and All The President's Men (1976), and also wrote the screenplay for one of the best 1980s family movies ever made, The Princess Bride (1987) (based on his novel of the same name).
Barbara Harris was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as an aspiring actress in Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971). An accomplished, Tony Award-winning actress, Harris co-founded the Second City comedy troupe in Chicago, singing the first number of its first show in 1959. On film, she also appeared in Nashville (1975), as Jodie Foster's mother in Freaky Friday (1976), as a fraudulent medium in Alfred Hitchcock's final film Family Plot (1976), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988). Her last film role was as John Cusack's mother in Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
Tab Hunter was one of the biggest teen idols of the 1950s. Appearing in films such as Battle Cry (1953), The Sea Chase (1955) and The Girl He Left Behind (1956), Hunter seemed perennially cast as young handsome soldiers in romantic situations. After a brief musical career- which saw him cast as the lead in Damn Yankees (1958)- his career waned during the 1960s, due to a combination of trying to get out of a restrictive contract, and a new wave of handsome young men coming in to take his place. He made an unlikely return in John Waters' film Polyester (1981) playing the suave Todd Tomorrow who seduces downtrodden Francine Fishpaw (played by Divine). The two would reunite for Western spoof Lust In The Dust (1985). He made his last film appearance in 1992.
Ricky Jay was not only an actor- appearing in The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Mystery Men (1999), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999) and as Henry Gupta in the Brosnan Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)- but he was also a technical consultant/advisor specialising in magic, confidence tricks, and sleight of hand. He consulted on various films including House Of Games (1987), The Illusionist (2006), The Prestige (2006), and Ocean's Thirteen (2007)
Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson won the Golden Globe for his score for The Theory Of Everything (2014) and was also nominated for both a BAFTA and an Oscar for the same score. His score for Sicario (2015) was also nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA, and his score for Arrival (2016) gained him BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations. He also composed the score for Prisoners (2013), The Mercy (2018) and Mary Magdalene (2018).
Choreographer and actor Lindsay Kemp worked with both David Bowie and Kate Bush, staging and performing in Bowie's 1972 Ziggy Stardust concerts and playing the Guide in Bush's 1994 short The Line, The Cross & The Curve. He appeared in Derek Jarman's Sebastiane (1976) and Jubilee (1978), as Puck in a 1985 TV version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, as a pantomime dame in Velvet Goldmine (1998) and played the pub landlord Alder MacGreagor in seminal British thriller The Wicker Man (1973).
Whilst Margot Kidder will be best remembered for her role as Lois Lane in the Superman films of the 1970s and 1980s, she was more than just that one role. She also played Barb, one of the sorority sisters menaced by an unseen killer, in cult horror movie Black Christmas (1974) and played opposite Robert Redford in The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), before appearing in The Amityville Horror (1979) and Maverick (1994). She also appeared opposite John Hurt and Vanessa Redgrave in a modern adaptation of Crime And Punishment (2002) and as Laurie Strode's therapist in Halloween II (2009). Aside from film roles, Kidder had roles on TV in Brothers And Sisters, The L Word, Captain Planet And The Planeteers, and as Bridgette Crosby in Smallville.
John Mahoney was an accomplished film, theatre, and television actor. A member of Chicago's prestigious Steppenwolf Theatre company, he appeared in over twenty productions for them over his career. He will be best remembered for playing the down-to-earth patriarch Martin Crane in Frasier, in which he appeared in all 263 episodes. His filmography includes roles in Moonstruck (1987), Say Anything... (1989), Barton Fink (1991), Reality Bites (1994), The American President (1995), Primal Fear (1996), and The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy (2000), and voice roles in Antz (1998), The Iron Giant (1999) and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001).
Penny Marshall's career started in front of the camera, playing Laverne DeFazio in Happy Days and her own spin-off Laverne & Shirley (with Cindy Williams). However, she was also a prolific director, making her feature film directorial debut with Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986) as a late replacement for another director She also directed Big (1988), Awakenings (1990), A League Of Their Own (1992), The Preacher's Wife (1996) and Riding In Cars With Boys (2001). She was the first female director to direct a movie which grossed over $100 million in the US- with Big- and the first female director with two movies grossing over $100 million- with A League Of Their Own.
Peter Masterson was an actor, writer, and director. As an actor, he appeared in In The Heat Of The Night (1967), as Dr Barringer in The Exorcist (1973), and as Walter Eberhart in The Stepford Wives (1975). He wrote the original book and the film screenplay for The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas (1982). As a director, he made his directorial debut with The Trip To Bountiful (1985)- for which actress Geraldine Page won the Best Actress Oscar- and also directed Night Game (1989), Arctic Blue (1993) and Lost Junction (2003).
Sondra Locke was nominated for an Oscar for her first ever film role, playing a sensitive teenager who is friends with a deaf-mute man in The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (1968), a role for which she won a nationwide talent search. Throughout her career, she worked with Clint Eastwood on several films including The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Every Which Way But Loose (1978), Any Which Way You Can (1980), and Sudden Impact (1983). Other film roles include Death Game (1977), The Shadow Of Chiikara (1977) and The Gauntlet (1977). She was also active behind the camera, directing Ratboy (1986), Impulse (1990) and Trading Favors (1997). Her last film role was in 2017 in Ray Meets Helen, which she was also credited as executive producer.
Dorothy Malone won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1957 for her role as Marylee Hadley in the Douglas Sirk melodrama Written On The Wind. In a career spanning six decades, she appeared on film in The Big Sleep (1946), The Fast And The Furious (1955), Man Of A Thousand Faces (1957) and The Man Who Would Not Die (1975). On TV, she played Constance Mackenzie in over 400 episodes of Peyton Place and appeared in several Peyton Place TV movies. Her final screen appearance came in 1992 when she played Hazel Dobkins in Basic Instinct.
Making his film debut in 1961, Burt Reynolds had a career of over fifty years, starring as the macho Lewis Medlock in Deliverance (1972), as the Bandit in Smokey And The Bandit (1977) and its sequels, as JJ McClure in The Cannonball Run (1981) and its sequel, and as Sheriff Dodd in The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas (1982). He also appeared as Boss Hogg in the 2005 film adaptation of The Dukes Of Hazzard, and appeared as Coach Scarborough in The Longest Yard (2005), a remake of his 1974 film The Mean Machine. He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as porn director Jack Horner in Boogie Nights (1997).
Nicolas Roeg never went to film school, but learned his trade on film sets, starting as an editing apprentice in 1947 then working his way up to cinematographer, working on such films as The Masque Of The Red Death (1964), A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (1966) and Far From The Madding Crowd (1967). His directorial debut came with the 1970 film Performance, starring Mick Jagger, which was co-directed by Donald Cammell. He went on to direct Walkabout (1971), the David Bowie vehicle The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976), the big-screen adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches (1990) and the seminal British horror Don't Look Now (1973). He also directed two adverts shown on British TV in the 1980s, warning about the emergence of AIDS.
David Ogden Stiers' first film role was as the voice of the Announcer in George Lucas' THX1138 (1971). He would go on to be a very well-known voice actor, working extensively with Disney. Other film roles include Magic (1978), The Man With One Red Shoe (1985), The Accidental Tourist (1988), and Lady In The Water (2006). On television, he appeared as Major Charles Emerson Winchester III in over 130 episodes of M*A*S*H (1977-1983). He was the voice of Cogsworth in Beauty And The Beast (1991), Governor Ratcliffe in Pocahontas (1995) and Dr Jumba Jookiba in Lilo & Stitch (2002) and also provided voices for the English versions of the Studio Ghibli films Porco Rosso (1992), My Neighbours The Yamadas (1999) and Spirited Away (2001)
Isao Takahata was one of the co-founders of Studio Ghibli, the Japanese anime studio. Having worked with Hayao Miyazaki on previous film projects in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Takahata was invited to help found the studio, and would be its second most prolific director. Having produced Nausicaa of the Valley Of The Wind (1984) and Studio Ghibli's first official film- Laputa: Castle In The Sky (1986)- Takahata wrote and directed Grave Of The Fireflies (1988). He also wrote and directed Only Yesterday (1991), Pom Poko (1994), My Neighbours The Yamadas (1999) and The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya (2013). His final film was The Red Turtle (2016) for which he was artistic producer.
Verne Troyer will be remembered for playing Mini-Me in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Austin Powers In Goldmember. Born with achondroplasia dwarfism, Troyer was 2ft 3ins tall and began his film career as a stuntman in Baby's Day Out (1994) and Jingle All The Way (1996). Aside from playing Mini-Me, Troyer had roles in Men In Black (1997), Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (1998), Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone (2001) and The Love Guru (2008).
In a career spanning over seven decades, Dame June Whitfield worked with many of the luminaries of the British comedy scene, from Eric Sykes and Arthur Askey to Tony Hancock and Benny Hill. She appeared in four Carry On... films, and was known for her collaborations with Terry Scott in Happy Ever After (1974-1978) and Terry & June (1979-1987). She also played a wonderfully daffy- and increasingly dipsomaniacal- Mrs White in the first series of Cluedo, and appeared in Doctor Who as Minnie Hooper. She became known to an entire new generation of fans as Edina's Mother in Absolutely Fabulous, making her final film appearance in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016).
Others who passed away this year include:
- American actor Frank Adonis (Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Casino)
- American producer Paul G. Allen (Titus, Hard Candy, Ghost Fleet)
- American cameraman Albert Bettcher (The Graduate, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner)
- British actor John Bluthal (The Vicar Of Dibley, The Fifth Element, Hail! Caesar)
- American producer and writer Steven Bochco (Doogie Howser MD, L.A. Law, NYPD Blue)
- American actress Debbie Lee Carrington (Return Of The Jedi, Howard The Duck, Total Recall)
- American film editor John Carter (The Heartbreak Kid, Friday, Madea's Family Reunion)
- British actress Emma Chambers (Notting Hill, The Vicar Of Dibley)
- American comic artist and writer Steve Ditko (Spider-Man, Doctor Strange)
- British comedian Ken Dodd (Hamlet, Doctor Who, Alice In Wonderland)
- American actor Frank Doubleday (Assault On Precinct 13, Escape From New York, Broadcast News)
- British comedienne and actress Bella Emberg (History of the World: Part I, The Russ Abbot Show)
- Cuban title designer Pablo Ferro (Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, Beetlejuice)
- British actress Fenella Fielding (Guest House Paradiso, Carry On Screaming, Carry On Regardless)
- American singer Aretha Franklin
- British actress Liz Fraser (I'm All Right Jack, Carry On Regardless, Dad's Army)
- British writer Ray Galton (Steptoe And Son, Hancock's Half Hour, Loot)
- British actor Leslie Grantham (Eastenders, Doctor Who)
- Welsh actress Helen Griffin (Twin Town, Human Traffic, Solomon & Gaenor)
- French composer Francis Lai (Love Story, International Velvet, A Man And A Woman)
- American writer Ursula K. LeGuin (The Left Hand Of Darkness, Tales From Earthsea)
- American director Danny Leiner (Dude, Where's My Car?, Harold & Kumar Get The Munchies, The Great New Wonderful)
- American actor James Karen (Poltergeist, Mulholland Drive, The Return Of The Living Dead)
- American screenwriter Gloria Katz (American Graffiti, Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, Howard The Duck)
- American sound editor Nicholas V. Korda (E.T., As Good As It Gets, Invictus)
- American producer Arnold Kopelson (Platoon, The Fugitive, Se7en)
- American producer Gary Kurtz (Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, The Dark Crystal, American Graffiti)
- Chinese director Ringo Lam (City On Fire, Full Alert, Victim)
- British producer Robbie Little (Tsotsi, An American Haunting, The Last Station)
- British choreographer Gillian Lynne (The Phantom Of The Opera, Yentl)
- British art director/production designer Terence Marsh (Oliver!, Doctor Zhivago, The Shawshank Redemption)
- American writer Joe Masteroff (Cabaret)
- American actor Al Matthews (Aliens, Tomorrow Never Dies, Superman III)
- British actor Bill Maynard (Carry On Matron, Heartbeat)
- American producer Benjamin Melniker (Batman, The Dark Knight, Constantine)
- British actor Donald Moffat (The Thing, The Right Stuff, Clear And Present Danger)
- Irish singer Dolores O'Riordan (The Cranberries)
- British actress Jacqueline Pearce (Servalan in Blake's 7, Doctor Who)
- British art director/production designer Michael Pickwoad (Withnail & I, The Krays, Doctor Who)
- Canadian actor Douglas Rain (the voice of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Made Contact)
- Indian director Mrinal Sen (Calcutta 71, The Marginal Ones, Antareen)
- American producer Allison Shearmur (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Rogue One, Solo: A Star Wars Movie)
- British actor Dudley Sutton (Lovejoy, Orlando, The Football Factory)
- American producer, director and claymation artist Will Vinton (Return To Oz, Moonwalker, The Adventures Of Mark Twain)
- American writer and director Audrey Wells (Under The Tuscan Sun, The Truth About Cats & Dogs, The Hate U Give)
- American producer, writer and director Hugh Wilson (Police Academy, Guarding Tess, The First Wives Club)
- American actor Scott Wilson (In Cold Blood, In The Heat Of The Night, The Walking Dead)
- British actor Peter Wyngarde (The Innocents, Jason King, Flash Gordon)
- American producer Craig Zadan (Footlose, Chicago, Hairspray)
