When a celebrity dies
- There are cries of “Oh no!”, “Who?” or the main one in my house “I thought they were already dead”
- You can normally expect another one to be announced within the week
But why do we feel such a loss for certain people? Let’s look back at the worst year in Entertainment history that I can remember to see if we can see why.
In 2016 we lost nearly 150 people (that’s more than we lost in 2020 and we had Covid then) that had contributed to the world of Entertainment including novelists, playwrights, songwriters/composers, musicians, comics and actors – obviously you’d not recognise every one of them but they made a contribution to their own part of the globe.
The most surprising of these deaths were those of David Bowie and Alan Rickman, both of these men died early January and were, as far as the general public were concerned, living healthy lives and continuing with their careers – Bowie had only just released his 25th album, Blackstar – but behind the scenes both men had been suffering from cancer for several months.
Former First Lady and 1950s actress, Nancy Reagan, died of heart failure in March; 12 years after her husband Ronald (America’s 40th President and former actor)
Prince died in April of an accidental overdose.
June saw the passing of Anton Yelchin, more shocking than that of Bowie and Rickman as he was only 27. Yelchin died pinned between his Jeep and a brick wall.
Gene Wilder passed away in August from complications of Alzheimer’s. Another one who kept his illness quiet from the public.
Acting family the Arquettes lost their sister Alexis to heart failure in September.
In November Robert Vaughn died of Leukaemia and the following month Peter Vaughan passed away peacefully in his sleep.
December also saw the loss of Princess Leia, aka Carrie Fisher, and her mother Debbie Reynolds a day later.
This is just a few of the more notable deaths from the world of film. Others include Victoria Wood, Andrew Sachs, Terry Wogan, Paul Daniels, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Kenny Baker (Star Wars’ original R2-D2)
Honesty time – How many of you said “I thought he/she was already dead” when at least one of these death was announced? I did a couple of times. So hands up those who realised David Bowie was 69 or that Carrie Fisher was 60 when they died? I didn’t until I sat down and realised that I had grown up with these people in my life in one form or another – whether that be on the screen or on the radio (you know that thing we had before digital music services). We look at celebrities and seem to forget they age just like we do; we see an image that sticks in our mind e.g. Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in that iconic bit of video shown by R2-D2 to Luke in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, we forget that that image was nearly 40 years old and Carrie was only 19 when she filmed it.
The advantage that we have with modern technology is that we can keep those images, films and music long after these celebrities have passed. We can relive those special moments with them again and again – they have been immortalised for posterity. If only we could just forget 2016 happened and we could live in peaceful bliss that these stars are still out there doing what they do best – entertaining the world.
