The celebrities we’ve lost in 2021… While we had all hoped for a reprieve from the difficulties of 2020, this year continues to take its toll.
March 16: Yaphet Kotto has died at the age of 81. Kotto is best known for his film roles in Alien, Live and Let Die, and The Running Man. He was also in the long running TV show Homicide: Life on the Streets. His cause of death has not yet been announced.
February 12: Brayden Smith, a five-time Jeopardy! Champion passed away unexpectedly at 24 years of age. It was reported that he died following complications after surgery. Smith completed toward the end of Alex Trebek’s tenure on jeopardy, prior to his own passing.
February 10: Hustler publisher and porn mogul, Larry Flynt, was 78 when he died of reported heart failure. Flynt built in an adult-industry empire and rose to fame in the 1960s and 10970s. He famously fought for free-speech rights in court and was portrayed by Wood Harrelson in The People vs. Larry Flynt.
February 5: Hollywood screen legend Christopher Plummer died after a head injury from a fall, according to reports. He was 91. The revered actor won a multitude of awards including an Oscar, a Golden Globe, multiple Emmys, among others. He had been in movies since the 1950s and appeared in classics such as The Sound of Music, The Man Who Would Be King, 12 Monkeys, A Beautiful Mind, and more recently in Up and The Man Who Invented Christmas.
February 1: Saved by the Bell actor, Dustin Diamond, past away after a brief battle with stage four small-cell lung carcinoma. The disease took him only a few weeks after learning he had the disease and having completed chemotherapy. He was 44.
January 28: Legendary actress Cicely Tyson was 96 when she passed away on January 28. She was a stereotype-breaking actress who won the trifecta of awards – a Tony, and Emmy, and an honorary Oscar.
January 26: Cloris Leachman was an icon of Hollywood still working into her 90s when she passed away on January 26, 2021. According to IMDB, she completed three movies in 2020 and has one expected to release in 2021. She began her career in 1949 and worked steadily for the next eight decades.
January 23: 95-year-old Hal Holbrook passed away. He had acted in movies and television for 7 decades appearing in movies such as All the President’s Men, The Fog, Lincoln, Into the Wild, and Creepshow. He was nominated for a Best Supporting Oscar for his performance in 2007’s Into the Wild and he won multiple Emmy Awards.
January 5: After a strange report of her passing, then being alive, then passing, Tanya Roberts died, from what was reported to be a urinary tract infection that developed into sepsis. Roberts stepped into world fame as a Bond Girl in A View to a Kill (1985) and was a regular cast member on That ‘70s Show.
