Some of the most talented performers of all time reached the end of the road doing what
they loved: making movies and television for devoted viewers across the globe.
Their sudden passing while on the job left their castmates reeling and fans heartbroken.
Here are a few stars both young and old whose lives were cut short while they were hard
at work.
Redd Foxx
On his classic '70s sitcom Sanford and Son, Redd Foxx was famous for faking a heart attack
to get out of a conversation.
And audiences loved it.
"This is the big one.
I'm dying.
Ya hear that, Elizabeth?
I'm comin to join ya honey."
Foxx brought the bit out of retirement when he returned to TV in 1991 with a sitcom called
The Royal Family.
But during rehearsal, according to production spokeswoman Rachel McCallister, Foxx and his
co-stars were:
"Clowning around, and Redd was sort of breaking people up when he collapsed.
[…] They all thought he was joking at first."
Four hours later at the hospital, Foxx passed away at age 68 of a heart attack.
Jon-Erik Hexum
Twenty-six-year-old heartthrob Jon-Erik Hexum starred in Cover Up, a CBS action show in
which he played an elite military operative.
One day in October 1984, the producers told Hexum that scheduling issues would delay filming,
so he grabbed a prop gun and quipped, "Can you believe this crap?"
Then he pulled the trigger.
Prop master Frank Laux remembered,
"He unloaded all but I guess one round."
"What would appear to be a game of Russian roulette, put it up to his head and pulled
the trigger."
The prop gun fired a cotton wad bullet, driving a bone fragment into his brain, which caused
severe hemorrhaging.
The actor was rushed to the hospital, where he fell into a coma, and passed away six days
later.
John Ritter
While he had a successful film career with roles in Sling Blade and Bad Santa, John Ritter
will forever rank among our most beloved and prolific TV actors.
"She's gonna send you bowling."
"I don't bowl!"
"I'm supposed to teach you!"
His likability and gift for physical comedy helped elevate Three's Company, and his return
to TV in 2002 as the star of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter was one of
the biggest stories of the year.
ABC had renewed the sitcom for a second season, and production was underway in September 2003
when Ritter suddenly fell ill on set, feeling dizzy and nauseated while complaining of chest
pains.
Ritter checked in to a hospital in Burbank, where doctors treated him for what they initially
thought was a heart attack.
But further tests revealed a previously undiagnosed aortic dissection, which proved fatal for
Ritter.
He was just 54 years old.
Steve Irwin
Famously known as "The Crocodile Hunter," Steve Irwin was the enthusiastic, Australian
nature show host who boldly ventured into hostile environments to teach viewers about
dangerous and exotic creatures.
"You can see why they call them tiger… tiger rattlesnakes."
But in September 2006, as Irwin and crew were filming a documentary about the Great Barrier
Reef in Australia, Irwin and cameraman Justin Lyons encountered an eight-foot-wide stingray,
which attacked Irwin.
Lyons said the creature launched "hundreds of strikes in a few seconds," delivering a
fatal dose of venom and a two-inch-wide gash over Irwin's heart.
He was 44 years old.
Tommy Cooper
A beloved British entertainer, Tommy Cooper combined corny jokes, prop comedy, and magic
for an act that was popular in the U.K. for decades.
But tragedy struck in April 1984 when Cooper appeared on the Live from Her Majesty's variety
show.
The show's host Jimmy Tarbuck, and likely many viewers of the live broadcast, thought
Cooper was improvising when he fell to the ground.
But the entertainer had suffered a heart attack.
The show cut to commercial, and Cooper was rushed to a hospital, where he passed away
at age 63.
Tyrone Power
Having enjoyed a meteoric rise to superstardom in the 1930s, Tyrone Power's breakthrough
role in Lloyd's of London came in 1936 when he was just 22 years old.
He went on to establish himself as an extremely versatile actor, but was most often cast in
swashbuckling adventure movies such as The Mask of Zorro.
In 1958, Power landed a title role in Solomon and Sheba.
But on November 11, 1958, as Power shot the eighth take of a demanding sword fighting
scene, he started to shake, and said he suddenly felt chilly and achy.
Power passed away en route to the hospital, having suffered a fatal heart attack at age
44.