We remember the people of world politics, culture, science and sports who died over the past 12 months. They include Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, famed actress Brigitte Bardot, singers Bonnie Tyler and Dolly Parton, and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.
NOVEMBER 2025
Nov. 3 – Dick Cheney – Republican Party politician, the 46th vice president of the United States and a member of President George W. Bush’s administration from 2001 to 2009; considered the most influential vice president in U.S. history; he was 84.
Nov. 3 – Kim Jong Nam – longtime head of diplomacy and nominal head of state of North Korea under Kim Jong Il; he was 97.
Nov. 4 – Cardinal Dominik Duka OP – former primate of the Czech Republic, a key figure of the Czech Catholic Church at the turn of the 21st century; he was 82.
Nov. 4 – Diane Ladd – American actress, three-time Oscar nominee for supporting roles, including in David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart”; she was 89.
Nov. 4 – Krystyna Adamowicz – Lithuanian journalist honored for her service to Polish identity in Lithuania, winner of the “Polish Woman of the Year 2022” title and recipient of numerous state awards; she was 87.
Nov. 5 – Pauline Collins – British actress known for the title role in “Shirley Valentine,” for which she was nominated for an Oscar, among other honors; she was 85.
Nov. 6 – James D. Watson – American biologist regarded as one of the most important scientists of the 20th century, winner of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discovering the structure of DNA; he was 97.
Nov. 21 – Ornella Vanoni – Italian singer, one of the most significant figures in Italian popular music; she was 91.
Nov. 23 – Udo Kier – German actor who appeared in more than 250 film and television productions, recognized for his villain roles, including Frankenstein and Count Dracula; he was 81.
Nov. 24 – Dharmendra Deol – Indian actor considered one of the most outstanding in his country’s cinema, who appeared in more than 300 films over a career spanning more than 60 years; he was 89.
Nov. 27 – Archbishop Francisco Gil Hellín – Spanish cleric, archbishop of Burgos, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family; he was 85.
Nov. 29 – Tom Stoppard – British playwright and screenwriter who won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for the screenplay of the 1998 film “Shakespeare in Love”; he was 88.
DECEMBER 2025
Dec. 3 – Steve Cropper – American guitarist, songwriter and music producer who played in the rhythm and blues band Booker T. & the M.G.’s and appeared in the film “The Blues Brothers,” in which he played the hit “Soul Man”; he was 84.
Dec. 4 – Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa – Japanese actor and film producer, known for roles in “Mortal Kombat” and “Memoirs of a Geisha”; he was 75.
Dec. 6 – Martin Parr – British photographer, one of the best-known documentarians of everyday life in Britain since the 1970s; he was 73.
Dec. 10 – Sophie Kinsella – British writer, author of the bestselling “Shopaholic” series of novels; her books have sold more than 50 million copies and been translated into more than 40 languages; she was 55.
Dec. 14 – Rob Reiner – American actor, film director and producer; he appeared in films including “Sleepless in Seattle” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” and directed such films as “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally” and “A Few Good Men”; he was 78.
Dec. 14 – Michele Singer Reiner – American photographer, political activist and film producer, wife of Rob Reiner; she was 70.
Dec. 18 – Arnulf Rainer – Austrian artist known, among other things, for his series of works called Uebermalungen; he was 96.
Dec. 19 – Tatiana Radziwiłł – French aristocrat of Polish descent and bacteriologist; she was 86.
Dec. 21 – Mikita Mielkaziorau – Belarusian journalist and opposition activist; he was 37.
Dec. 22 – Chris Rea – British rock and blues singer, known for songs such as “Driving Home for Christmas” and “The Road to Hell”; he was 74.
Dec. 25 – Perry Bamonte – guitarist and keyboardist of the British rock band The Cure; he was 65.
Dec. 28 – Brigitte Bardot – French actress, a sex symbol of the 1950s and 1960s, one of the greatest stars of French cinema and an animal rights activist; she was 91.
Dec. 30 – Khaleda Zia – the first woman to serve as prime minister in Bangladesh’s history; she was 80.
JANUARY 2026
Jan. 3 – Eva Schloss – Austrian Holocaust survivor and Holocaust educator, stepsister of Anne Frank; she was 96.
Jan. 5 – Aldrich H. Ames – Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, traitor and spy, considered the most damaging traitor in the agency’s history; he was 84.
Jan. 10 – Bob Weir – American guitarist, vocalist and co-founder of the legendary band Grateful Dead; he was 78.
Jan. 13 – Claudette Colvin – American pioneer of the civil rights movement of the 1950s; her arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery during racial segregation helped launch the modern civil rights movement; she was 86.
Jan. 15 – Angelo Gugel – Italian valet to three popes: John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI; after the assassination attempt on John Paul II, he was the one who supported the pope in the popemobile and helped him reach the infirmary; he was 90.
Jan. 19 – Valentino Garavani – Italian fashion designer, founder of the Valentino fashion house; he was 93.
Jan. 30 – Catherine O’Hara – Canadian-American actress, known for films including “Home Alone” and “Beetlejuice”; she was 71.
FEBRUARY 2026
Feb. 1 – Rita Süssmuth – German politician, former president of the Bundestag, member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a champion of Polish-German reconciliation; she was 88.
Feb. 13 – Roy Medvedev – Russian philosopher, historian and commentator, a critic of Stalinism and author of, among other works, “All Stalin’s Men”; he was 101.
Feb. 15 – Robert Duvall – American actor and director, an Oscar winner known for roles in films such as “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now”; he was 95.
Feb. 16 – Semen Gluzman – Ukrainian psychiatrist, dissident and prisoner of Soviet labor camps who fought against repressive communist psychiatry; he was 79.
Feb. 17 – Jesse Jackson – American pastor and politician, an icon of the civil rights struggle in the United States and a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr.; he was 84.
Feb. 27 – Neil Sedaka – American singer, one of the best-known figures of the early days of rock and roll, author of hits such as “Stupid Cupid” and “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen”; he was 86.
Feb. 28 – Ali Khamenei – supreme spiritual and political leader of Iran; he was 86.
MARCH 2026
March 2 – Nikolai Kolyada – Russian actor, director and playwright, one of the most important figures in contemporary Russian theater; he was 69.
March 14 – Jürgen Habermas – German philosopher, sociologist and commentator, considered one of the most outstanding European intellectuals of the 20th century; he was 96.
March 17 – Ilia II – Georgian Orthodox cleric, patriarch and head of the Georgian Orthodox Church; he was 93.
March 19 – Umberto Bossi – Italian politician, founder of the right-wing Northern League party and a key figure on Italy’s contemporary political scene; he was 84.
March 19 – Chuck Norris – American action film actor and martial arts champion, six-time world karate champion; he was 86.
March 20 – Filaret (Denysenko) – patriarch of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, known for fighting for his church’s independence from Moscow; he was 97.
March 20 – Robert Mueller – American lawyer and former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election campaign; he was 81.
March 22 – Lionel Jospin – French politician, member of the Socialist Party (PS) and prime minister of France from 1997 to 2002; he was 88.
March 24 – Gino Paoli – Italian singer, composer and songwriter, called a poet of song, whose works, including “Sapore di sale,” have left a lasting mark on history; he was 91.
APRIL 2026
April 3 – Vittorio Messori – Italian journalist, writer and Catholic commentator, author of the 1994 interview with Pope John Paul II, “Crossing the Threshold of Hope”; he was 84.
April 9 – Afrika Bambaataa (real name Lance Taylor) – American musician, vocalist and composer, considered one of the “godfathers” of hip-hop; he was 67.
April 12 – Asha Bhosle – Indian singer, a Bollywood legend; she was 92.
April 17 – Nathalie Baye – French actress, one of the best-known stars of French cinema and a four-time César Award winner; she was 77.
April 29 – John Craig Venter – American biologist who contributed significantly to the decoding of the human genome; he was 79.
April 30 – Georg Baselitz – German sculptor and painter whose trademark was inverted paintings, painted “upside down”; he was 88.
MAY 2026
May 6 – Ted Turner – American businessman, producer and media mogul, founder of CNN, the world’s first 24-hour news television channel; he was 87.
May 10 – Abraham Foxman – American lawyer, community activist and Holocaust survivor, longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League and one of the most recognizable activists fighting anti-Semitism in the United States; he was 86.
May 12 – Nina Litvinova – Russian human rights defender and dissident; she was 80.
May 21 – Carlo Petrini – Italian activist and writer, founder of the Slow Food movement, which promotes good, clean, safe and fair food for all; he was 76.
May 25 – Sonny Rollins – American jazz saxophonist and composer, called the “saxophone colossus”; he was 95.
May 29 – Edgar Morin – French sociologist and philosopher, considered one of the most important contemporary French intellectuals; he was 104.
JUNE 2026
June 4 – Marjane Satrapi – French-Iranian author of comics and animated films who gained international fame with the graphic novel “Persepolis,” later adapted for the screen, about the Islamic Revolution in Iran; she was 56.
June 5 – Bernadette Chirac – politician and activist, first lady of France from 1997 to 2005, wife of President Jacques Chirac; she was 93.
June 11 – David Hockney – English painter, draftsman, printmaker, photographer and stage designer, one of the most important contemporary British artists and a leading figure of pop art in the 1960s; he was 88.
June 16 – Camillo Ruini – Italian Catholic cleric, one of the most influential cardinals in that country, president of the Italian Episcopal Conference from 1991 to 2007; he was 95.
June 21 – Ramiro Valdés – Cuban politician, hero of the Cuban Revolution and one of the closest associates of Cuba’s former communist dictator Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl; he was 94.
June 22 – Alan Greenspan – American economist, longtime chairman of the Federal Reserve; he was 100.
June 22 – Clive Davis – American music producer responsible for the careers of, among others, Whitney Houston; he was 94.
June 24 – David Clayton-Thomas – Canadian rock musician, vocalist of the band Blood, Sweat & Tears; he was 84.
JULY 2026
July 2 – Lam Wing-kee – Hong Kong bookseller and symbol of resistance to Beijing’s policies; he was 70.
July 8 – Bonnie Tyler – Welsh singer with a distinctive voice, a star of the 1980s whose biggest hits included “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “It’s a Heartache”; she was 75.
July 11 – Lindsey Graham – influential Republican politician in the United States who represented South Carolina first in the House of Representatives and, from 2003, in the Senate; he was 71.
July 11 – Susumu Tonegawa – Japanese scientist, winner of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discovering the principles underlying the diversity of antibodies; he was 86.
July 12 – Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani – former emir and prime minister of Qatar, under whom the country became one of the richest in the world and an influential player on the international stage; he was 74.
July 13 – Sam Neill – New Zealand actor known for roles in films such as “Jurassic Park” and “The Piano” and the series “Peaky Blinders”; he was 78.
July 24 – Gunther von Hagens – German preparator of corpses, inventor of the plastination method and creator of Body Worlds, a network of anatomy exhibitions popular around the world that presents real human bodies and organs; he was 81.
July 29 – Glen Hansard – Irish musician, vocalist of the rock band The Frames and winner of a 2008 Oscar for the song “Falling Slowly”; he was 56.
July 30 – Kazimira Prunskiene – Lithuanian politician, the first prime minister of Lithuania after the country regained independence in 1990; she was 83.
AUGUST 2026
Aug. 12 – Zhu Rongji – former prime minister of China who gained a reputation as an uncompromising reformer, fought corruption and brought the country into the World Trade Organization (WTO); he was 97.
Aug. 14 – Yayoi Kusama – one of the most acclaimed Japanese avant-garde artists, known around the world as the “queen of dots”; she was 97.
Aug. 16 – Hayden Panettiere – American actress, known for roles in the series “Heroes” and “Nashville”; she was 36.
Aug. 17 – Frank Beard – American musician, drummer of the rock band ZZ Top and co-creator of the hits “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Gimme All Your Lovin'”; he was 77.
Aug. 22 – Siim Kallas – former prime minister and foreign minister of Estonia, vice president of the European Commission and father of Kaja Kallas, the EU’s current high representative for foreign affairs and security policy; he was 77.
Aug. 25 – Dolly Parton – American country singer, as well as songwriter, actress and philanthropist, author of more than 3,000 songs, including the hits “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You”; she was 80.
Aug. 25 – Tim Curry – American actor, known for roles in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York”; he was 80.
Aug. 27 – Ratko Mladić – former commander of the Bosnian Serbs, a war criminal widely called the “Butcher of the Balkans,” who was responsible, among other things, for the genocide in Srebrenica and was convicted in The Hague of genocide, among other crimes; he was 83.
Aug. 28 – Harald V – king of Norway since 1991; he was 89.
Aug. 31 – Édouard Balladur – French politician, former prime minister of France from 1993 to 1995; during a 50-year political career he was also a deputy, minister of economy and finance, and a Paris city councilor; he was 97.
SEPTEMBER 2026
Sept. 1 – Cassandra Wilson – American jazz vocalist and producer, a two-time Grammy winner; she was 70.
Sept. 2 – Gloria Steinem – American feminist activist and journalist, regarded as an icon of feminism, who devoted most of her life to the fight for gender equality and for women’s civil and reproductive rights; she was 92.
Sept. 5 – Michael Mendl – German actor, known for the films “Downfall” and “Karol Wojtyła. Tajemnice papieża,” who specialized in character roles, often playing negative characters entangled in conflicts; he was 82.
Sept. 8 – Tung Chee-hwa – Chinese businessman, the first leader of Hong Kong after the British colony’s return to China in 1997; he was 89.
Sept. 14 – Bob Mackie – American fashion and costume designer, known as the “sultan of sequins”; he was 87.
Sept. 24 – Marina Vlady – French actress and singer; she was 88.
Sept. 30 – Margaret Hamilton – American computer scientist and outstanding programmer who contributed, among other things, to the success of NASA’s Apollo missions; she was 90.
OCTOBER 2026
Oct. 1 – Biljana Plavšić – Yugoslav and Serbian politician, former president of Republika Srpska, part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, sentenced to 11 years in prison for crimes against humanity committed during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina; she was 96.
Oct. 3 – Dennis Hastert – American politician, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007, the longest-serving Republican in that post in the history of Congress; he was 84.
Oct. 6 – Eva Marie Saint – American actress, one of the last stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age and an Oscar winner for “On the Waterfront”; she was 102.
Oct. 7 – Maricarmen Abascal – Madrid resident who became a symbol of protests against rising rents in Spain; she was 87.
Oct. 10 – Pierre Joliot – French biochemist, grandson of Polish chemist and Nobel laureate Maria Skłodowska-Curie, a respected researcher honored with numerous distinctions in France and around the world; he was 94.
Oct. 22 – Yasuo Fukuda – former prime minister of Japan from 2007 to 2008, who helped stabilize relations with China; he was 90.
Oct. 28 – Patrick Stewart – British actor associated with the Royal Shakespeare Company, known for his roles as Captain Picard in series and films of the Star Trek universe and as Professor Xavier in the X-Men universe; he was 86.
(PAP)