Of course, millions of people left this world in this year, and the names which aren’t famous (or at least familiar to me) are, to other people in their direct circle, much more impactful. And there were at least as many born during the same year — but there’s no way to tell at present which of them will have wide-reaching fame.
(And yes, I know there were many more sports-related people who died this year, but I don’t follow sports and their names didn’t mean anything to me.)
- Richard Leakey
- Peter Bogdanovich
- Sidney Poitier
- Bob Saget
- Ron Goulart
- Dave Farland
- Yvette Mimieux
- Peter Robbins
- Meat Loaf
- Louie Anderson
- Morgan Stevens
- Howard Hesseman
- Robert Wall
- Robert Blalack
- Douglas Trumbull
- Ivan Reitman
- P.J. O’Rourke
- Brad Johnson
- Veronica Carlson
- Priscilla Tolkien
- Conrad Janis
- Alan Ladd Jr.
- John Stahl
- Mitchell Ryan
- Emilio Delgado
- William Hurt
- Akira Takarada
- Madeleine Albright
- Taylor Hawkins
- Estelle Harris
- Nehemiah Persoff
- Bobby Rydell
- Jimmy Wang Yu
- Gilbert Gottfried
- Guy Lafleur
- Marshall Arisman
- Orrin Hatch
- Klaus Schulze
- David Birney
- Neal Adams
- Naomi Judd
- Patricia A. McKillip
- George Perez
- Fred Ward
- Rosmarie von Trapp
- Vangelis
- Ray Liotta
- Andrew Fletcher
- Ken Kelly
- Tim Sale
- Joe Turkel
- Cüneyt Arkin
- James Caan
- Shinzo Abe
- Ivana Trump
- Eric Flint
- Alan Grant
- Stuart Woods
- David Warner
- Paul Sorvino
- James Lovelock
- Bernard Cribbins
- Tony Dow
- Nichelle Nichols
- Clu Gulager
- David McCullough
- Roger E. Mosley
- Olivia Newton-John
- Raymond Briggs
- Wolfgang Petersen
- Anne Heche
- Mikhail Gorbachev
- Peter Straub
- Queen Elizabeth II
- Jean-Luc Godard
- Ken Starr
- Henry Silva
- Louise Fletcher
- Kitten Natividad
- Coolio
- Loretta Lynn
- Angela Lansbury
- Mike Schank
- Robbie Coltrane
- Jules Bass
- Julie Powell
- Jerry Lee Lewis
- Andrew Prine
- Jean Shumate
- Kevin Conroy
- John Aniston
- Gallagher
- Greg Bear
- Jason David Frank
- Nico Fidenco
- Irene Cara
- Albert Pyun
- Christine McVie
- Ray Nelson
- Bob McGrath
- Kirstie Alley
- Angelo Badalamenti
- Kim Mohan
- Eduard Artemyev
- Ruggero Deodato
- Pelé
- Barbara Walters
- Pope Benedict XVI
- Mario Bianchi
- Judy Levitt
What really hurts about this list is that of all the names I recognize on this list, not a one is anyone whose name I’d actually want to see on this list. As the late P.J. O’Rourke once said concerning the 1960s (while threatening to aim his shotgun at any attempts to revive the culture if that era), not only was the number of people dying in that era awfully high, but the deaths seemed bizarrely selective as if someone were culling out all the best and brightest of his generation and leaving only the “stunted goat mutants” to carry on its legacy. Here’s hoping this doesn’t mean we’re about to go through the same kinds of upheavals in our time as his generation did.
At least most of the names on this list are people who served a good, full life, and were past the period where they had done the things they were famous for — they weren’t cut down in their prime. (Dave Farland, an older but still productive novelist and writing coach who died from an accidental fall, is one notable exception.)
Yeah, the one name that sticks out to me in terms of “not quite in the prime, but still could have done a lot of productive work” is Ray Liotta.
Notable deaths in Asian/Chinese cinema:
Ni Kuang – Wrote many of the Shaw Brothers films; racked up 221 credits, most of which were between 1967 and 1984
Peter Yang Kwan – Actor, did a lot of old school kung fu movie
Alan Chui Chung-San – Actor and fight choreographer
Kenneth Tsang – Actor; played Danny Lee’s partner in “The Killer” (which you reviewed) and the villain in films like Supercop, The Replacement Killers and Die Another Day.
Chor Yuen – Director; directed lots of classic wuxia films at the Shaw Brothers, played the villain in Police Story