The 93rd Oscars in Los Angeles have paid lengthy tribute to film-makers and actors who have died over the past 14 months, since the last Academy Awards.
Angela Bassett introduced a montage of deceased artists, prefaced with an acknowledgement of the some three million people who have to date died from coronavirus.
Best actor nominee Chadwick Boseman was among those remembered most prominently; the star of Black Panther and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom died in August 2020 from cancer at the age of 43. Should the actor win in his category he would become the third recipient of a posthumous acting Oscar, following past wins for Peter Finch and Heath Ledger.
Other talent who featured in this year’s in memoriam section included Sean Connery, the former James Bond, who died in October aged 90, as well as fellow Bond veterans Honor Blackman, Michael Lonsdale, Tanya Roberts and Diana Rigg.
Christopher Plummer, the Sound of Music star who became the oldest actor to date to win an Oscar (aged 82, for Beginners), was also remembered, as was Max von Sydow, the Ingmar Bergman regular who died in March 2020.
Other icons of the screen who were lost over the past year include Gone With the Wind star Olivia De Havilland, at the age of 104, French cinema legend Michel Piccoli, Earl Cameron, Rhonda Fleming, Barbara Shelley and Cicely Tyson as well as Star Wars actors Jeremy Bulloch and Dave Prowse.
Ian Holm’s death last summer met with widespread mourning; likewise that of Mad Max star Hugh Keays-Byrne. American icons Brian Dennehy, Hal Holbrook, George Segal, Cloris Leachman, Carl Reiner and Jerry Stiller all left indelible marks on cinema.
Film actors best known for their small-screen comedy roles who died this year include Friday Night Dinner’s Paul Ritter, Arrested Development’s Jessica Walter and Dustin Diamond, who played Screech in Saved by the Bell, and, last May, Christopher Guest regular Fred Willard.
A number of film-makers passed away tragically young over the past year, including Kelly Preston, Lynn Shelton, Irrfan Khan, DMX, and Helen McCrory, whose death at 52 was announced 10 days ago.
Among the directors who died this year included Michael Apted, Joan Micklin Silver, Alan Parker, Joel Schumacher and Terrence McNally, while Fountains of Wayne musician and composer Adam Schlesinger died last year of coronavirus. John le Carré, whose novels were made into several films, also died, as did the extraordinary French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, and Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton.
Composer Ennio Morricone died aged 91; while Fountains of Wayne musician and composer Adam Schlesinger died last year of coronavirus.
