
Today, like his father, he is remembered as a star gone too soon. The film became a hit upon release largely thanks to Lee's talent and made him a posthumous star. Cameras were rolling when the actor fired the gun, fatally wounding Lee.Īfter some rewrites, Lee’s remaining scenes were completed using a stunt double and early CGI effects.
#Recent actor deaths series#
Tragically, a series of mistakes by the production team led to the 28-year-old star being shot with the remnants of a real bullet instead of a dummy cartridge. On March 31, 1993, he filmed the scene where his character was to be shot and killed. Like his father, Lee was an accomplished martial artist and actor, and had already appeared in the minor action hit Rapid Fire when he was cast in The Crow, a comic book adaptation about a rock musician brought back from the dead to avenge his and his fiancé’s murder. She was just 31.īrandon Lee had big shoes to fill - his father was legendary martial artist and actor Bruce Lee - but he was on his way to doing just that when his life was tragically cut short. According to her doctor, this hastened her death from a kidney infection (a condition brought on by her paralysis) and pneumonia.
#Recent actor deaths professional#
She had professional successes - notably playing Laura in a stage production of The Glass Menagerie - but she soon fell into a deep depression and stopped eating and drinking as much as she should. Her beloved mother died, she and her husband divorced, and she left MGM, unhappy with the roles she was offered. The years that followed were difficult for Peters. She survived, but the gunshot left her permanently paralyzed from the waist down. She was raced to the hospital, where she underwent emergency surgery. On New Year’s Day in 1945, Peters and her husband were hunting ducks when she reached for a rifle that accidentally fired a bullet into her abdomen. Afterward, her studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer elevated her to the studio's official "star" category, and she turned in a slew of fantastic performances in everything from comedies to war films. Peters had already established herself as one of the finest young actors in Hollywood when, at just 21, she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards for her role in 1942's acclaimed drama Random Harvest. The cause of death, it turned out, was kidney failure, possibly a result of having had scarlet fever a decade earlier. On June 6, she was raced to the hospital, where she slipped into a coma and died. She finally went home to rest on May 30, but didn’t improve. Sadly, she felt worse and worse, most notably when she had to perform a scene where her character was sick and appeared far sicker than her character was supposed to be. She complained of sickness while filming, but the studio doctor didn’t take her sickness very seriously so she kept working. The young star had health problems in 1937 - she contracted influenza and developed sepsis after a wisdom tooth extraction - but she nevertheless was able to start filming Saratoga with Clark Gable in May. A sex symbol famous for her platinum blonde hair (she was the first to be called a "blonde bombshell"), she also had serious comedic chops and showed them off in hits like Reckless.
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Jean Harlow was one of the biggest movie stars to break out in the immediate post–silent film era, and starred in hit after hit in the ‘30s. Later in the year, he and his partner Rooney Mara named their first child River. In 2020, Joaquin, while accepting the Best Actor Academy Award for Joker, paid tribute to his older brother by quoting one of his lyrics. While Phoenix's tragic death meant he would never go on to become a leading actor of his generation, his brother Joaquin would. A toxicology report would find cocaine and morphine in his blood.


While there, Phoenix took drugs and soon collapsed outside. 30, 1993, Phoenix went with his girlfriend Samantha Mathis and siblings Joaquin and Rain to the Hollywood club the Viper Room. Sadly, while Phoenix espoused a clean living lifestyle publicly, he privately struggled with drugs. He made his mark in Stand By Me, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (playing young Indy), and Running on Empty, for which the then 18-year-old earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Academy Awards.
In the '80s, River Phoenix was a rare combination: a teen heartthrob and a deeply talented actor who was expected to become one of the greatest actors of his generation.
