The level of talent that left the planet in 2020 is both profound and saddening. And yet,
even though they're no longer around, their legacies will continue to live
on. Watch on as we pay tribute to just some of the actors and actresses we sadly lost in 2020.
Dame Diana Rigg enjoyed an acting career that spanned from the 1950s until the 2020s.
The acclaimed British actress died at age 82 in September of 2020.
Standout roles included Emma Peel in Brit-hit The Avengers, 007's doomed bride in the 1969
James Bond flick On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and, more recently, cunning Lady
Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones. Rigg remained a working actress until the end; posthumous
projects include FX series Black Narcissus and Last Night in Soho, slated for a 2021 release.
Ben Cross passed away in August of 2020, losing his battle with cancer at age 72.
The London-born actor first rose to fame for his role in the Oscar-winning 1981
drama Chariots of Fire, playing a Jewish-British athlete who fought
anti-Semitism while striving for a gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics.
You might recognize an older Cross in the role of Sarek , father of Spock,
in 2009's Star Trek, a movie that brought him a whole new sci-fi fanbase.
Zachary Quinto , who played Spock in the film, paid tribute on Instagram. He wrote:
"[Cross] was always so incredibly thoughtful
and generous and engaging... He was a real gentleman and a true talent."
When Olivia de Havilland passed away at 104 in July of 2020, she was the last surviving star of
the Oscar-winning epic Gone With the Wind. That film brought her the first of five Academy Award
nominations; she would eventually win two, both for Best Actress, for To Each His Own in 1947 and
The Heiress in 1950. In 2017, in her 100th year, de Havilland was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth.
What you probably didn't know about Olivia de Havilland was that she fearlessly took on
Hollywood in two high-profile lawsuits: suing Warner Bros. in the '40s in a contract dispute,
and suing the FX network in 2018 over a fictionalized portrayal of her in Feud:
Bette and Joan that left her, quote, "deeply offended."
Throughout her life, de Havilland was also known for having a bitter relationship with her sister,
actress Joan Fontaine, who passed away in 2013. In a 2016 interview with Associated Press,
de Havilland insisted there was no "feud," because that word, quote,
"implies continuing hostile conduct between two parties," she said, going on to say:
"I cannot think of a single instance wherein I initiated hostile behavior."
Best known for playing Santana Lopez on hit TV musical Glee,
Naya Rivera tragically passed away in July of 2020. The actress accidentally drowned
while boating with her 4-year-old son on California's Lake Piru .
According to authorities, Rivera and her son were swimming in the lake when she was
unable to keep afloat, with Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub reporting:
"She mustered enough energy to get her son back onto the boat, but not enough to save herself."
Rivera was beloved by her former cast mates,
who offered tributes on social media. Co-star Chris Colfer wrote on Instagram:
"Being close to her was both a badge of honor and a suit of armor.
Naya was truly one of a kind, and she always will be."
Heather Morris, who played Rivera's love interest on the show,
also honored her co-star and good friend.
Writing on Instagram that they'd bonded over both being mothers of young sons, Morris added:
"I cherish every moment we had and hold it close to my heart."
During a Hollywood career that began with TV roles in the early 1980s,
Kelly Preston was known for her roles in such films as Jerry Maguire and
For Love of the Game. Sadly, in July of 2020, her husband, actor John Travolta,
announced that Kelly Preston had tragically died, writing in an Instagram tribute:
"It is with a very heavy heart that I inform you that my beautiful wife
Kelly has lost her two-year battle with breast cancer."
Fans were shocked, given that Preston hadn’t
publicly revealed news of her illness prior to her death.
British actor Ian Holm's distinguished career began on British television. The classically
trained Shakespearean actor, whose last film role was in 2014, passed away in June of 2020
at age 88. According to Variety, Holm had been battling Parkinson's disease for several years.
Having appeared in dozens of film and TV projects over a span of seven decades,
Holm is perhaps best known for two: android Ash in the 1979 sci-fi/horror hybrid Alien;
and the elderly version of hobbit Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings movies.
His final film appearance, in fact, was in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
Fred Willard's name is guaranteed to conjure a smile from anyone recalling
his hilarious work in Christopher Guest-directed comedies such as
Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind. Guest's wife,
actress Jamie Lee Curtis was the first to reveal Willard’s passing at 86 in May of 2020, tweeting:
"How lucky that we all got to enjoy Fred Willard's gifts."
“I think that’d be a little dangerous.”
“Ha ha ha… I’d get a kick out of it.”
As Willard's obituary in Rolling Stone pointed out, his breakthrough
came in 1977 when he was cast as dimwitted sidekick Jerry Hubbard in Fernwood 2 Night,
a faux talk show spun off from soap spoof Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. From there,
Willard built up a body of film and television work that's beyond impressive, often taking
small roles he made memorable, including parts in This Is Spinal Tap and Anchorman. Most recently,
Willard had a recurring role on Modern Family, playing the father of Phil Dunphy.
Jerry Stiller, who died at age 92 in May of 2020, had two com edy careers. As his obituary
in The New York Times recalled, in 1961, he and wife Anne Meara were struggling actors
in New York City when they decided to become a comedy team. In 1963, Stiller & Meara made
their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, where they would ultimately perform 36 times.
Three decades later, Stiller experienced even greater success as Seinfeld's Frank Costanaza,
the apoplectic , Festivus-founding father of Jason Alexander's George Costanza. When first
offered the part, however, Stiller was committed to a Broadway show,
and was forced to turn it down. However, Seinfeld called again, Stiller told the Television Academy,
and this time he said yes. He continued on to say that the years spent on Seinfeld were, quote,
“the best years of my life as an actor." In addition to appearing in numerous
movies — including four directed by his and Meara's son, Ben Stiller — Stiller followed
his Seinfeld stint as a series regular on The King of Queens, which ran from 1998 until 2007.
Two and a Half Men star Conchata Ferrell , who passed away in October of 2020 at age 77,
got her start onstage in New York. When producer Norman Lear adapted the off-Broadway comedy
Hot L Baltimore as a 1975 sitcom, he hired Ferrell to reprise her role for the short-lived series.
Ferrell continued to work in television, appearing in series ranging from The Love Boat to L.A. Law,
with her recurring role in the latter delivering her first Emmy nomination.
In a 2014 interview with The A.V. Club, Ferrell recalled being cast in Two and
a Half Men, for what was originally intended to be two episodes, saying:
"I remember coming home after the second show and saying to my husband,
'Boy, I hope they're thinking what I'm thinking, because I really fit there.'"
Series creator Chuck Lorre felt the same way, and by the second season,
Ferrell had become a series regular.
With the passing of Brian Dennehy in April of 2020 at 81,
the world lost a rare actor who was just as comfortable in a harrowing,
gritty drama as he was in a slapstick comedy. A veteran of stage and screen,
Dennehy's roles ran the gamut, from the dogged cop who pushes Sylvester Stallone's John Rambo
over the edge in 1982's First Blood to the father of Chris Farley's doofus man-child in Tommy Boy.
In 2001, Dennehy won a Golden Globe for portraying Willie Loman in a TV adaptation
of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. He previously won a Tony Award for playing the
same role on Broadway in 1999, and won a second Tony for Long Day's Journey Into Night in 2003.
When Max Von Sydow passed away at age 90 in March of 2020, the Swedish-born actor left
behind a 70-year legacy of work that touched on all possible genres. Name another actor to
have played both Jesus Christ – in The Greatest Story Ever Told – and Satan – in Needful Things;
a Catholic exorcist – in The Exorcist; and a 14th-century knight engaged in a life-or-death
chess match with the Grim Reaper – in The Seventh Seal. Other noteworthy appearances came with
Strange Brew, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and even Game of Thrones' Three-Eyed Raven.
In an Interview he gave while filming Needful Things,
Von Sydow explained his ongoing battle to avoid typecasting, saying:
"I always look for something different from what I've done before. I want variety,
and I have had it, but it's been at times difficult and tough to achieve,
because people have a tendency to typecast you... And I hate that."
When Monty Python's Flying Circus hit U.K. television in the late '60s,
the surreal sketch satire show was like nothing the world had ever seen.
Sadly, one of the comedy troupe's six founding members, Terry Jones,
passed away in January of 2020, a few years after being diagnosed with dementia.
As his BBC News obituary detailed, Jones and fellow Python Terry Gilliam
co-directed 1975's Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
with Jones serving as solo director of big-screen follow-ups Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.
Comedy wasn't Jones' only passion, either; he was also an expert in Medieval history,
which led him to host such TV series as Terry Jones' Medieval Lives and Terry Jones' Barbarians.
In addition, Jones was also the author of several scholarly works of history.
An era officially ended when Hollywood icon Kirk Douglas died in February of 2020 at 103.
Born Issur Danielovitch , Douglas changed his name and headed to Hollywood,
landing his first screen role in 1946's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers . More roles,
and bigger ones, kept coming his way, until he was cast in the title role in the 1949
boxing drama The Champion, bringing him the first of three Oscar nominations.
More acclaimed performances followed: a troubled jazz musician in 1950's Young Man with a Horn;
the "gentleman caller" in a 1950 screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie ; a
second Oscar nomination for 1952's The Bad and the Beautiful; tortured artist Vincent
Van Gogh in 1956's Lust for Life – his third Oscar-nominated role; and, in 1960, the role
that would follow him for the next 60 years and beyond: a slave-turned-gladiator in Spartacus.
“I’m Spartacus!”
British actor Albert Finney, who died in February of 2020 at 82,
burst on the scene in the early '60s as part of British cinema's wave of "angry young men."
His first major role, noted his obituary in The New York Times, was as a dissatisfied
blue-collar worker in 1960's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. That led to the title role in
1963's Tom Jones, catapulting him to stardom and delivering the first of five Oscar nominations.
Despite such defining roles, Finney avoided typecasting by portraying an
eclectic array of characters, ranging from Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot
in Murder on the Orient Express to gruff American lawyer Edward L. Masry in Erin
Brokovich to a mentally deteriorating Shakespearean actor in The Dresser.
After a hiatus in the late 2000s, due to a fight with cancer,
Finney returned to take small roles in big films, including The Bourne Ultimatum and
sequel The Bourne Legacy, and the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall – his final screen role.
Famed actor Sean Connery passed away at the age of 90 in late October 2020.
He starred in dozens of films throughout an acting career spanning from the 1950s to the 2000s.
However, he'll forever be remembered for being the first actor to identify himself as:
"Bond, James Bond."
Beginning with 1962's Dr. No, Connery played the suave British super-spy in seven movies;
voters in a British poll declared him to be, by a wide margin, the best Bond.
Connery won his first and only Oscar in 1988 for a supporting role in The Untouchables,
and he received an even more prestigious honor when the Queen of England knighted him in 2000.
Connery officially announced his retirement from acting in 2006, following what he described as a
very unpleasant experience making 2003's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. While he
considered reprising the role of Indiana Jones' dad in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, he
explained in a personal statement that, quote, "in the end, retirement is just too damned much fun."
Born in an Ontario mining town in 1940, Alex Trebek began his broadcasting career with CBC,
Canada's national broadcaster, eventually hosting quiz show Reach for the Top.
“In what part of the world would you find a wombat?”
From that time on, Trebek became synonymous with game shows. After heading to Hollywood in the
early 1970s, Trebek spent the next decade as TV's go-to guy for game shows, hosting everything from
The Wizard of Odds to Classic Concentration and many more. He even acted a little, portraying
himself in TV shows like Seinfeld, as well as lending his voice to The Simpsons and Arthur.
Yet it wasn't until he was hired in 1984 to host Jeopardy! that all the pieces fell into place.
When Trebek passed away after a battle with pancreatic cancer at age 80 in November 2020,
he'd been the show's host for over 35 years — becoming a television icon in the process.
Chadwick Boseman was poised for some big things when his life was tragically cut
short in August 2020. Fans of the 43-year-old actor were shocked by the realization that
he'd been secretly waging a battle with colon cancer over the past four years
during a period when his movie career was exploding.
As his BBC News obituary recounted, Boseman received rave reviews in a variety of biopics
playing Black baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson in 42, godfather of soul James Brown in Get On Up,
and the first Black Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in Marshall. Boseman's
career catapulted to a whole new level, however, when he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as
King T'Challa , ruler of the fictional African nation of Wakanda in Black Panther.
The film was a critical and commercial triumph that raked in more than $1.3 billion worldwide.
Geoffrey Palmer, who died at 93 in November 2020,
was a familiar face to American filmgoers, thanks to roles in such
hit movies as the James Bond flick Tomorrow Never Dies and family favorite Paddington.
He began his career onstage in the 1950s, before making the transition into television and film.
He found his greatest success on the small screen, when he and longtime friend Dame
Judi Dench partnered for the TV Britcom As Time Goes By in 1992. Palmer and Dench played former
lovers who reconnected 38 years later, with the series chronicling their late-in-life romance.
Running for several seasons, the show also managed to break through to American audiences.
Regis Philbin
When Regis Philbin passed away of natural causes at age 88, he was one of the most familiar faces
ever to emanate from a television screen. Reege , as friends and fans called him, was no overnight
success; it wasn't until he was paired with Kathie Lee Gifford for daytime smash Live! with Regis and
Kathie Lee in 1988, that he became a national sensation and a daytime perennial for decades.
In the 2000s, at an age when most folks his age would have been contemplating retirement,
Philbin was enjoying even bigger success on primetime thanks to ABC's Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire?, a hit game show of such immense popularity that,
at one point, the network was running it five times each week. As Fortune pointed out,
the show generated a staggering $1 billion in revenue during its first two years. Notably,
Philbin also acted, playing himself in shows like Mad About You, Spin City, and Ugly Betty,
as well as portraying characters in Hope & Faith and various other shows.
In 2004, Philbin set a Guinness World Record
for being the person to log the most hours on television.
Though not a household name, actress Mary Pat Gleason's face was undoubtedly recognizable to
anyone who watches TV. With a list of screen credits extending back to the early 1980s,
Gleason — who passed away at 70 in June 2020, after battling cancer — spent much
of her career as an in-demand character actor in both comedy and drama productions,
including the 1996 film adaptation of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
While Gleason's screen credits include ample movies, it's on television where she really built
up her body of work, guest starring in dozens upon dozens of series. Her range was wide and eclectic,
playing a memorable role as Mrs. Butters on Desperate Housewives and appearing as a police
officer in Guiding Light. Gleason also had a notable recurring role on CBS sitcom Mom as Mary.
When Lynn Cohen died at age 86 in February 2020,
she left behind an extensive body of work in film and television, in addition to Broadway
and off-Broadway productions. Among her more notable films were Hunger Games: Catching Fire,
Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery, and Steven Spielberg's Munich .
Despite being busy as a young actress, Cohen's most memorable role did not come to her until
late in life, when she was cast as Miranda's grouchy Eastern European housekeeper Magda
on Sex and the City. She ultimately appeared in more than a dozen episodes of the HBO hit,
eventually becoming a nanny when Miranda had a baby.