Date of Death between 2001-01-01 and 2001-12-31 (Sorted by Popularity Ascending)
1. Kathleen Freeman
Actress | The Blues Brothers
Kathleen Freeman's introduction to show business came very early in life. Her parents were vaudevillians, and she made her debut at age 2 in their act. Later she attended UCLA with intentions of becoming a pianist, but was bitten by the acting bug and never looked back. She gained experience on ...
2. Jack Lemmon
Actor | The Apartment
Jack Lemmon was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Mildred Lankford Noel and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., the president of a doughnut company. His ancestry included Irish (from his paternal grandmother) and English. Jack attended Ward Elementary near his Newton, MA home. At age 9 he was sent to Rivers ...
3. Anthony Quinn
Actor | Alexis Zorbas
Anthony Quinn was born Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca (some sources indicate Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca) on April 21, 1915, in Chihuahua, Mexico, to Manuela (Oaxaca) and Francisco Quinn, who became an assistant cameraman at a Los Angeles (CA) film studio. His paternal grandfather was Irish, ...
4. Jane Greer
Actress | Out of the Past
As a baby, she was winning beauty contests; as a teenager, with good looks and an attractive contralto voice, she was singing with big bands (most notably Enric Madriguera's orchestra in Latin Club Del Rio in Washington, D.C.. She met Rudy Vallee, her first husband, on the radio where she also ...
5. Ray Walston
Actor | Popeye
Ray Walston started his acting career as a spear carrier with a local stock company. When the family moved to Houston, Texas, Walston's father wanted to teach him the oil business, but Walston instead joined a traveling repertory company (selling tickets as well as acting). He went on to associate ...
6. Dorothy McGuire
Actress | Gentleman's Agreement
A genuine model of sincerity, practicality and dignity in most of the roles she inhabited, actress Dorothy McGuire offered Tinseltown more talent than it probably knew what to do with. A quiet, passive beauty, she had a soothing quality to her open-faced looks and voice. She was a natural when he ...
7. Anne Haney
Actress | Liar Liar
Anne Haney held prominent roles acting on stage, on the screen, and on TV. All these achievements came in her mid-40s, after she had raised a daughter and buried a husband. It wasn't until after she had packed her daughter off to college and "the maid quit", as she said, that she decided to try her...
8. Aaliyah
Soundtrack | Romeo Must Die
Talented. Beautiful. Modest. These three words described R&B singer-turned-actress Aaliyah perfectly.
Aaliyah Dana Haughton was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Diane (Hankerson) and Michael Haughton. Her uncle was music manager Barry Hankerson and her brother is director Rashad Haughton. Aaliyah was ...
9. David Graf
Actor | Police Academy
David Graf was a Lancaster, Ohio native. He was a graduate of Lancaster High School in 1968. He went on to attend college at Otterbein University where he graduated in 1972 as a theater major. He attended Ohio State University grad school until 1975 when he dropped out to pursue an acting career in...
10. Carroll O'Connor
Actor | All in the Family
Carroll was born in Manhattan and raised in Forest Hills, a heavily Jewish community in New York City's borough of Queens. After graduating from high school in 1942, O'Connor joined the Merchant Marines and worked on ships in the Atlantic. In 1946, he enrolled at the University of Montana to study ...
11. Victor Wong
Actor | Big Trouble in Little China
Eccentric-looking Chinese-American actor with a slightly drooping face (the result of a bout of Bell's palsy) who studied political science, art & journalism before becoming a news reporter for a San Francisco public TV station in the late 1960s.
Apart from a brief stint in the mid-1970s on the TV ...
12. Nigel Hawthorne
Actor | The Madness of King George
Widely regarded as one of the greatest stage and screen actors both in his native UK and internationally, the unparalleled Nigel Hawthorne was born in Coventry, England on 5 April 1929, raised in South Africa and returned to the UK in the 1950s with his extensive work as a great gentleman of acting...
13. Gina Mastrogiacomo
Actress | Goodfellas
Gina Mastrogiacomo was born on November 5, 1961 in Great Neck, Long Island, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Goodfellas (1990), The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991) and The X-Files (1993). She died on May 2, 2001 in California, USA.
14. Charlotte Coleman
Actress | Four Weddings and a Funeral
Charlotte Coleman was born on April 3, 1968 in Westminster, London, England as Charlotte Ninon Coleman. She was an actress, known for Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1989) and Beautiful People (1999). She died on November 14, 2001 in Holloway, London.
15. Edward Winter
Actor | Porky's II: The Next Day
Edward Winter was born on June 3, 1937 in Ventura, California, USA as Edward Dean Winter. He was an actor, known for Porky's II: The Next Day (1983), M*A*S*H (1972) and Simon & Simon (1981). He was married to Linda Foster, Sandra Frances Ward and Ronda Faye Moe. He died on March 8, 2001 in ...
16. Ann Sothern
Actress | The Whales of August
Ann Sothern's film career started as an extra in 1927. Originally a redhead, she began to bleach her hair blonde for comedy roles. After working at MGM and on Broadway, Ann was signed by Columbia Pictures for Let's Fall in Love (1933). The next year she would work with Eddie Cantor in his hit Kid ...
17. Troy Donahue
Actor | A Summer Place
Troy Donahue was a journalism student at Columbia University when he began playing in stock productions. He made his film debut in Man Afraid (1957) and in 1959 signed as a contract player with Warner Bros., which promoted him to stardom with A Summer Place (1959) that year. He was soon a teenage ...
18. Nancy Parsons
Actress | Porky's
Nancy Parsons was born in Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota, to Mary Margaret née Samsa and Charles Walter Parsons. She had two siblings -- Mary Jean Parsons and Theresa Mae Macrae née Parsons. When she was seventeen, her father remarried Genevieve Stack and moved with the three girls to South Pasadena, ...
19. Lewis Arquette
Actor | Little Nicky
Lewis Arquette was born on December 14, 1935 in Chicago, Illinois, USA as Lewis Michael Arquette. He was an actor and writer, known for Little Nicky (2000), Waiting For Guffman (1996) and Tango and Cash (1989). He was married to Brenda Denaut. He died on February 10, 2001 in Los Angeles, California...
20. Otis Young
Actor | The Last Detail
Otis Young was born on July 4, 1932 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He was an actor, known for The Last Detail (1973), The Clones (1973) and The Capture of Bigfoot (1979). He was married to Barbara Young and Cara Croninger. He died on October 11, 2001 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
21. Gloria Foster
Actress | The Matrix Reloaded
Gloria Foster will always be best known for her performance as The Oracle in The Matrix (1999) and The Matrix Reloaded (2003), but the actress's career spanned four decades on the stage and screen.
Born on November 15, 1933 in Chicago, Illinois, Foster was put in the custody of her grandparents and ...
22. Jason Miller
Actor | The Exorcist
Character actor and playwright Jason Miller had a variety of jobs before he started a writing career and wrote his own play, "That Championship Season", for which he received the Pulitzer Prize Award. Miller gave up his professional writing career in the early seventies to start acting. In 1973, he...
23. Michael Williams
Actor | Henry V
Michael Williams was born on July 9, 1935 in Liverpool, England as Michael Leonard Williams. He was an actor and writer, known for Henry V (1989), Eagle in a Cage (1972) and A Fine Romance (1981). He was married to Judi Dench. He died on January 11, 2001 in Hampstead, London, England.
24. Kim Walker
Actress | Heathers
Known for her supporting roles, Kim Walker was an up and coming young actress in Hollywood before retiring from the business in the late 1990s. As a teen she landed a few guest roles in series such as Matlock (1986) and Highway to Heaven (1984) before moving on to supporting roles in feature films ...
25. Stanley Kramer
Producer | Judgment at Nuremberg
Stanley Kramer was born on September 29, 1913 in Hell's Kitchen [now Clinton], Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA as Stanley Earl Abramson. He was a producer and director, known for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and Inherit the Wind (1960). He was married to ...
26. John Mitchum
Actor | Dirty Harry
John Newman Mitchum was the September child of a Norwegian mother and an Irish/Blackfoot father whom he never knew, as he was killed in a tragic train yard accident in 1919. His two-years-older brother Robert filled the role as best as he could, while their older sister Annette studied the lively ...
27. George Harrison
Actor | A Hard Day's Night
A master musician, a film producer and actor, best known as the lead guitarist and occasionally lead vocalist of The Beatles, George Harrison was born February 25, 1943, in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. He was also the youngest of four children, born to Harold Harrison and Louise Harrison.
Like ...
28. Berry Berenson
Actress | Cat People
Born Berinthia Berenson in New York in 1948, Berenson was a noted photographer and actress and was the sister of model-turned-actress Marisa Berenson (of "Barry Lyndon" fame). Berenson met her husband, actor and star of Alfred Hitchcock's original version of Psycho (1960), Anthony Perkins on the ...
29. Deborah Walley
Actress | Ski Party
Actress, author, producer, and Photoplay's "Most Popular Actress of 1961," the daughter of Ice Capades skating stars and choreographers Nathan and Edith Walley. She was skating with her parents at age three, but resisted her father's urging to continue, opting to study acting at the New York ...
30. Eileen Heckart
Actress | The Bad Seed
Versatile, award-winning character actress Eileen Heckart, with the lean, horsey face and assured, fervent gait, was born Anna Eileen Herbert on March 29, 1919, in Columbus, Ohio. An only child, she lived with her mother after her parents separated at age 2, and was eventually adopted by her ...
31. Thuy Trang
Actress | The Crow: City of Angels
Thuy Trang was born on December 14th of 1973 in Saigon, Vietnam. After the fall of Saigon in 1975 to Communist forces, her father who had fought in the Vietnam War, traveled to the United States to seek political asylum. However, his entire family, unable to follow, were left behind.
In 1979, Thuy ...
32. Roy Brocksmith
Actor | Total Recall
Roy Brocksmith began his career on the bar at Hap Kuhl's Tavern in his native Quincy, Illinois, at the age of three. As a boy soprano, he performed in churches, schools, and appeared regularly on local radio and television programs. At 16, he taught at the local children's theater. Two years later ...
33. Arlene Francis
Actress | The Thrill of It All
Arlene Francis, the witty actress and popular television personality, was born Arlene Francis Kazanjian on Oct. 20, 1907, in Boston. Her father was an Armenian immigrant, later painter and portrait photographer; her mother was the daughter of actor Alfred Davis. Even at an early age, Arlene said, "...
34. Imogene Coca
Actress | National Lampoon's Vacation
Imogene Coca is best remembered for playing opposite Sid Caesar in the live 90-minute Your Show of Shows (1950), which ran every Saturday night in regular season on NBC from February 1950 to June 1954. Their repertoire of comedy acts included the very memorable, hilarious, timeless and ...
35. Rosemary DeCamp
Actress | The Bob Cummings Show
RoseMary De Camp was the quintessential small-town American mother, a calming and steadying presence in scores of films in the 1940s and 1950s. She came to Hollywood after a successful career on the stage and in radio, making her film debut in 1941. Though she worked for many studios, she was most ...
36. Scott Marlowe
Actor | The Subterraneans
Scott Marlowe is an American film, stage and television actor.
His first feature film role was in the 1954 production of Attila. Two years later, he starred as John Goodwin in an episode "In Summer Promise" on General Electric Theater. In 1957 he appeared as Private Meredith in the war movie Men in ...
37. Harry Townes
Actor | Star Trek
Harry Townes was born and died in Huntsville, Alabama, where he served as an ordained Episcopal priest. Aside from Huntsville and the priesthood, he had a distinguished, prolific, and quite long career as a character actor in movies and on television. He attended the University of Alabama in the ...
38. Whitman Mayo
Actor | Sanford and Son
Noted for portraying characters older than his actual age, Whitman Mayo was in his early 40s in the early 1970s when he first played the sexagenarian "Grady" on "Sandford & Son" -- a role that popularized the expression "Good Goobily Goop!" Nearly thirty years later his "Grady" role had just about ...
39. Corinne Calvet
Actress | The Far Country
Petite, seductive French leading lady who underwent several early career changes before settling on the acting profession. Corinne Calvet first studied criminal law at France's renowned Sorbonne, but then turned her attention to interior decoration specializing in fine arts and antiques. After ...
40. Joan Sims
Actress | Carry On Screaming!
Joan Sims, the "First Lady of Carry On", was born Irene Joan Marion Sims on 9 May 1930. The daughter of an Essex railway station master, Joan was interested in pursuing show-business, and soon became a familiar face in a growing number of amateur productions. In 1946, Joan first applied to RADA, ...
41. Herbert Ross
Director | The Turning Point
Herbert Ross was born on May 13, 1927 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA as Herbert David Ross. He is known for his work on The Turning Point (1977), The Goodbye Girl (1977) and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969). He was married to Lee Radziwill and Nora Kaye. He died on October 9, 2001 in New York ...
42. Janet Shaw
Actress | Shadow of a Doubt
Janet Shaw was born on January 23, 1919 in Beatrice, Nebraska, USA as Ellen Martha Clancy. She was an actress, known for Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Night Monster (1942) and The Old Maid (1939). She was married to David Ashford Stuart and Willard Garcia Ilefeldt. She died on October 15, 2001 in ...
43. Michael Ritchie
Director | The Golden Child
Michael Ritchie was born on November 28, 1938 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, USA as Michael Brunswick Ritchie. He was a director and producer, known for The Golden Child (1986), The Island (1980) and Fletch (1985). He was married to Jimmie Brown and Georgina Tebrock. He died on April 16, 2001 in New York ...
44. Theodore Gottlieb
Actor | The 'Burbs
Theodore Gottlieb was born on November 11, 1906 in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. He was an actor and writer, known for The 'Burbs (1989), Nocturna (1979) and The Last Unicorn (1982). He died on April 5, 2001 in New York City, New York, USA.
45. Nyree Dawn Porter
Actress | The Protectors
Landing the starring role of Irene in the 1967 broadcast of John Galsworthy's "Forsyte Saga," Nyree Dawn Porter established herself as a prominent actress for television drama. She was born on the north island of New Zealand and was first a stage actress in New Zealand before setting out for a ...
46. Jean-Pierre Aumont
Actor | Lili
Another in the long line of dramatically handsome foreign imports who made an immediate impact on WWII Hollywood was debonair French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont. The epitome of grace and sophistication, the stylish leading man went on to have a long and respectful career on stage, film and TV, both ...
47. Julie Bishop
Actress | Northern Pursuit
Colorado-born leading lady Julie Bishop, who also acted under her birth name of Jacqueline Wells and the stage name Diane Duval, started off as a silent movie child actress, working with such legends as Clara Bow and Mary Pickford.
The daughter of a wealthy banker and oilman, she was raised in Texas ...
48. Lani O'Grady
Actress | Eight Is Enough
Although Lani O'Grady retired from acting in the '80s to become a talent agent like her mother, she had long secured her place in the TV Land pantheon as Mary, the brainiac wannabe doctor in Eight Is Enough (1977)'s expansive Bradford brood. The dramedy, starring Dick Van Patten as a newspaper ...
49. Arkie Whiteley
Actress | Mad Max 2
Arkie Whiteley was born on November 6, 1964 in London, England as Arkje Deya Whiteley. She was an actress, known for Mad Max 2 (1981), The Killing of Angel Street (1981) and Van der Valk (1972). She was married to Jim Elliott and Christopher Kuhn. She died on December 19, 2001 in Palm Beach, Sydney...
50. Foster Brooks
Actor | The Villain
Brooks was born in Louisville, Kentucky, one of eight sons, whose father was a county sheriff. Brooks dropped out of school after the 6th grade and did a variety of jobs before beginning a career in radio at the age of 21. He was a newscaster and disc jockey in Louisville, and Buffalo before ...