Notable deaths of 2024
Published: 11:12 AM,Dec 20,2024 | EDITED : 03:12 PM,Dec 20,2024
Spanish actress Marisa Paredes
From Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to British actress Maggie Smith and US music titan Quincy Jones, here are some of 2024's most notable deaths.
February:
HAGE GEINGOB, Namibia's President and its first post-independence prime minister, aged 82 - 9:
ROBERT BADINTER, France's former justice minister who ended capital punishment in 1981, 95 - 16:
ALEXEI NAVALNY, the top opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in prison aged 47, after over three years behind bars - 29:
ALI HASSAN MWINYI, former Tanzanian president, who introduced multi-party democracy, 98
March
IRIS APFEL, New York fashion celebrity known as the 'geriatric starlet', 102
AKIRA TORIYAMA, creator of Japan's 'Dragon Ball' manga and anime cartoons, 68
April
MARYSE CONDE, French writer, and chronicler of the lives of the descendants of Africans taken as slaves to the Caribbean, 90
PETER HIGGS, a British physicist whose theory of a mass-giving particle -- the so-called Higgs boson -- jointly earned him the Nobel Physics Prize, 94
O.J. SIMPSON, an ex-American football star acquitted in 1995 following the televised 'Trial of the Century' of the murder of his ex-wife and her male friend.A 1997 civil trial found Simpson liable and he then served nearly nine years in prison for a bungled 2007 armed robbery, 76
PAUL AUSTER, American novelist who wrote 'The New York Trilogy', 77
ROGER CORMAN, American B-movie filmmaker, 98
ALICE MUNRO, Nobel Prize-winning Canadian author known for her mastery of the short story, 92
June
AKIRA ENDO, a Japanese biochemist who discovered cholesterol-lowering statins, 90
FRANCOISE HARDY, a French singer who shot to international stardom in the 1960s, 80
ANOUK AIMEE, French film star of Claude Lelouch's box-office smash 'A Man and A Woman', 92
DONALD SUTHERLAND, Canadian actor of 'The Dirty Dozen' and 'The Hunger Games', 88
July
ISMAIL KADARE, Albanian novelist whose novels defied the communist dictator Enver Hoxha, 88
SHANNEN DOHERTY, US actress of the high school drama series 'Beverly Hills 90210', 53
NGUYEN PHU TRONG, general secretary of Vietnam's Communist Party, considered the country's top leader, 80
EDNA O'BRIEN, radical Irish writer whose first novel 'The Country Girls' was burned and banned in her native country, 93
ISMAIL HANIYEH, Hamas political chief, killed in Tehran in an attack blamed on Israel, 62
August
GENA ROWLANDS, award-winning US actress and muse of her first husband, director John Cassavetes, 94
ALAIN DELON, French film legend known for his roles in classics 'Plein Soleil' (Purple Noon) (1960) and 'Le Samurai' (1967), 88
September
ALBERTO FUJIMORI, Peru's former president, who spent 16 years in prison for crimes against humanity, 86
MAGGIE SMITH, British actor, 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie', 'Gosford Park', Harry Potter series: double Oscar-winner, 89
HASSAN NASRALLAH, Hezbollah chief, killed in an Israeli strike, 64
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, US country music legend, actor, 88
October
RATAN TATA, Indian industrialist, head of the Tata Group, 86
ETHEL KENNEDY, human rights activist and widow of assassinated US politician Robert F. Kennedy, 96
LIAM PAYNE, former member of the best-selling boys band One Direction, having fallen from the third floor of a Buenos Aires hotel, 31
YAHYA SINWAR, Hamas political chief, killed by Israeli troops, 61
FETHULLAH GULEN, cleric and bitter rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in exile in the United States, 83
November
QUINCY JONES, Trailblazing US musician, arranger, band leader, composer, and producer, 91
BREYTEN BREYTENBACH, South African award-winning writer and anti-apartheid activist, 85
PRINCE JOHNSON, former Liberian warlord, responsible for the gruesome 1990 killing of President Samuel Doe which plunged Liberia into two bloody civil wars, 72
December
MARISA PAREDES, Spanish actress who starred in six films by Pedro Almodovar, becoming known as 'Almodovar's Girl', 78
February:
HAGE GEINGOB, Namibia's President and its first post-independence prime minister, aged 82 - 9:
ROBERT BADINTER, France's former justice minister who ended capital punishment in 1981, 95 - 16:
ALEXEI NAVALNY, the top opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in prison aged 47, after over three years behind bars - 29:
ALI HASSAN MWINYI, former Tanzanian president, who introduced multi-party democracy, 98
March
IRIS APFEL, New York fashion celebrity known as the 'geriatric starlet', 102
AKIRA TORIYAMA, creator of Japan's 'Dragon Ball' manga and anime cartoons, 68
April
MARYSE CONDE, French writer, and chronicler of the lives of the descendants of Africans taken as slaves to the Caribbean, 90
PETER HIGGS, a British physicist whose theory of a mass-giving particle -- the so-called Higgs boson -- jointly earned him the Nobel Physics Prize, 94
O.J. SIMPSON, an ex-American football star acquitted in 1995 following the televised 'Trial of the Century' of the murder of his ex-wife and her male friend.A 1997 civil trial found Simpson liable and he then served nearly nine years in prison for a bungled 2007 armed robbery, 76
PAUL AUSTER, American novelist who wrote 'The New York Trilogy', 77
ROGER CORMAN, American B-movie filmmaker, 98
ALICE MUNRO, Nobel Prize-winning Canadian author known for her mastery of the short story, 92
June
AKIRA ENDO, a Japanese biochemist who discovered cholesterol-lowering statins, 90
FRANCOISE HARDY, a French singer who shot to international stardom in the 1960s, 80
ANOUK AIMEE, French film star of Claude Lelouch's box-office smash 'A Man and A Woman', 92
DONALD SUTHERLAND, Canadian actor of 'The Dirty Dozen' and 'The Hunger Games', 88
July
ISMAIL KADARE, Albanian novelist whose novels defied the communist dictator Enver Hoxha, 88
SHANNEN DOHERTY, US actress of the high school drama series 'Beverly Hills 90210', 53
NGUYEN PHU TRONG, general secretary of Vietnam's Communist Party, considered the country's top leader, 80
EDNA O'BRIEN, radical Irish writer whose first novel 'The Country Girls' was burned and banned in her native country, 93
ISMAIL HANIYEH, Hamas political chief, killed in Tehran in an attack blamed on Israel, 62
August
GENA ROWLANDS, award-winning US actress and muse of her first husband, director John Cassavetes, 94
ALAIN DELON, French film legend known for his roles in classics 'Plein Soleil' (Purple Noon) (1960) and 'Le Samurai' (1967), 88
September
ALBERTO FUJIMORI, Peru's former president, who spent 16 years in prison for crimes against humanity, 86
MAGGIE SMITH, British actor, 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie', 'Gosford Park', Harry Potter series: double Oscar-winner, 89
HASSAN NASRALLAH, Hezbollah chief, killed in an Israeli strike, 64
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, US country music legend, actor, 88
October
RATAN TATA, Indian industrialist, head of the Tata Group, 86
ETHEL KENNEDY, human rights activist and widow of assassinated US politician Robert F. Kennedy, 96
LIAM PAYNE, former member of the best-selling boys band One Direction, having fallen from the third floor of a Buenos Aires hotel, 31
YAHYA SINWAR, Hamas political chief, killed by Israeli troops, 61
FETHULLAH GULEN, cleric and bitter rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in exile in the United States, 83
November
QUINCY JONES, Trailblazing US musician, arranger, band leader, composer, and producer, 91
BREYTEN BREYTENBACH, South African award-winning writer and anti-apartheid activist, 85
PRINCE JOHNSON, former Liberian warlord, responsible for the gruesome 1990 killing of President Samuel Doe which plunged Liberia into two bloody civil wars, 72
December
MARISA PAREDES, Spanish actress who starred in six films by Pedro Almodovar, becoming known as 'Almodovar's Girl', 78