David Hemmings (1941 - 2003)

David Hemmings was born in Guildford, Surrey, to a cookie salesman father. His education at Alleyn’s School, Glyn Grammar School in Ewell, and the Arts Educational School, led him to start his career performing as a boy soprano in several works by the composer Benjamin Britten, who formed a close friendship with him at this […]

Lynne Thigpen (1948 - 2003)

Born in Joliet, Illinois, Thigpen obtained a degree in teaching. She taught English in high school briefly while studying theatre and dance at the University of Illinois. Thigpen moved to New York City in 1971 to begin her career as a stage actress. She had a long and prolific theater career, and appeared in numerous […]

Alan Bates (1934 - 2003)

Bates was born at the Queen Mary Nursing Home, Darley Abbey, Derby, England, on 17 February 1934, the eldest of three sons of Florence Mary (née Wheatcroft), a housewife and a pianist, and Harold Arthur Bates, an insurance broker and a cellist, who lived in Allestree, Derby, at the time. The family briefly moved to […]

Gregory Hines (1946 - 2003)

Hines was born in New York City, the son of Alma Iola (Lawless) and Maurice Robert Hines, a dancer, musician, and actor. Hines began tapping when he was two years old, and began dancing semi-professionally at the age of five. Since then, he and his older brother Maurice performed together, studying with choreographer Henry LeTang. […]

Jack Elam (1920 - 2003)

Elam was born in Miami in Gila County in south central Arizona, to Millard Elam and Alice Amelia Kirby. His mother died in 1922 when Jack was two years old. By 1930, he was living with his father, older sister Mildred, and their stepmother, Flossie Varney Elam. He grew up picking cotton and lost the sight […]

Horst Buchholz (1933 - 2003)

Horst Buchholz was born in Berlin, the son of Maria Hasenkamp. He never knew his biological father, but took the surname of his stepfather Hugo Buchholz, a shoemaker, whom his mother married in 1938. His half-sister Heidi, born in 1941, gave him the nickname “Hotte”, which he kept for the rest of his life. During […]

Richard Crenna (1926 - 2003)

Crenna was born in Los Angeles, the only child of Edith J. (née Pollette), who was a hotel manager in LA, and Domenick Anthony Crenna, a pharmacist. His parents were both of Italian descent. Crenna attended Virgil Junior High School, followed by Belmont High School in Los Angeles. Following high school, Crenna served in the […]

Elia Kazan (1909 - 2003)

Elia Kazan (born Elias Kazantzoglou, September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was an American director, producer, writer and actor, described by The New York Times as “one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history”. He was born in Istanbul, to Cappadocian Greek parents. After studying acting at Yale, he acted […]

Earl Hindman (1942 - 2003)

Earl John Hindman (October 20, 1942 – December 29, 2003) was an American film and television actor, best known for his role as the kindly neighbor (whose lower face was always hidden from television viewers) Wilson W. Wilson, Jr. on the television sitcom Home Improvement (1991–1999). Long before this role, however, he played villains in two […]

Jonathan Brandis (1976 - 2003)

Brandis was born in Danbury, Connecticut. He was the only child of Mary, a teacher and personal manager, and Gregory Brandis, a food distributor and firefighter. He began his career as a child model at the age of 4, and began acting in television commercials.  At the age of six, Brandis won the role of […]

Art Carney (1918 - 2003)

Carney, youngest of six sons (Jack, Ned, Robert, Fred, Phil, and Art) was born in Mount Vernon, New York, the son of Helen (née Farrell) and Edward Michael Carney, who was a newspaper man and publicist. His family was Irish American and Catholic. He attended A. B. Davis High School. Carney was drafted into the […]

Paula Raymond (1924 - 2003)

Paula Ramona Wright was born in 1924, in San Francisco, California. Her first acting role was playing Bettina Bowman in Keep Smiling (1938), credited as Paula Rae Wright. In 1950, she was put under contract by MGM, where she played opposite such leading men as Cary Grant and Dick Powell. Earlier in her career, Raymond […]

Nell Carter (1948 - 2003)

Born Nell Ruth Hardy in Birmingham, Alabama, she was one of nine children born to Horace and Edna Mae Hardy. When she was two years old, her father was electrocuted after he stepped on a live power line. As a child, she began singing on a local gospel radio show and was also a member of […]

Larry Hovis (1936 - 2003)

Hovis was born in Wapato, Washington, and moved to Houston, Texas as a small child. As a youth, he was a singer, appearing on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. Hovis attended the University of Houston. During the mid-1950s, Hovis sang in nightclubs with groups including the Mascots, and the Bill Gannon Trio. He wrote songs and […]

Gordon Jump (1932 - 2003)

Born Alexander Gordon Jump, in Dayton, Ohio, Jump graduated from Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio, in 1955. In 1957, Jump graduated with a degree in journalism from Kansas State University, where he was a member of Kappa Sigma Fraternity and worked for KSDB, the Kansas State Student Radio Station. He began his career working at […]

Kellie Waymire (1967 - 2003)

Suzanne Kellie Waymire was born in Columbus, Ohio, and was a descendant of Revolutionary War patriot John Rudolph Waymire. She attended Southern Methodist University (where she won the Greer Garson Award), graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater, and later earned a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of California, San […]

Anita Mui (1963 - 2003)

Mui experienced much hardship in her childhood. She was the youngest daughter in a family of four children. Her elder sister, Ann Mui, was also a singer. The children were raised in a single parent family. In some of her interviews, Mui mentioned that she had never met her father. This meant that she had […]

John Schlesinger (1926 - 2003)

Schlesinger was born in London, into a middle-class Jewish family, the son of Winifred Henrietta (née Regensburg) and Bernard Edward Schlesinger, a physician. After St Edmund’s School, Hindhead, Uppingham School and Balliol College, Oxford, he worked as an actor. Schlesinger’s acting career began in the 1950s and consisted of supporting roles in British films such as […]

Wendy Hiller (1912 - 2003)

Born in Bramhall, Cheshire, the daughter of Frank Watkin Hiller, a Manchester cotton manufacturer, and Marie Stone, Hiller began her professional career as an actress in repertory at Manchester in the early 1930s. She first found success as slum dweller Sally Hardcastle in the stage version of Love on the Dole in 1934. The play […]

Janice Rule (1931 - 2003)

Janice Rule was born in Norwood, Ohio, to parents of Irish origin. Her father was a dealer in industrial diamonds. She began dancing at the Chez Paree nightclub at fifteen, which paid for ballet lessons, and was a dancer in the 1949 Broadway production of Miss Liberty. Rule also studied acting at the Chicago Professional School. She […]

Prunella Ransome (1943 - 2002)

Born Prunella Jane Ransome in Croydon, Surrey, she later lived in Titchfield where her father Jimmy Ransome was a public school headmaster from 1952 to 1958. Ransome studied at Elmhurst School for Dance and began her performing career as a teenager. Ransome made her West End debut in a 1959 musical production of Jane Eyre with […]

Cyrinda Foxe (1952 - 2002)

Foxe was born Katheleen Victoria Hetzekian in Santa Monica, California, to an Armenian family. She grew up as an army brat in an abusive household. After graduating high school, she lived in Texas briefly before settling in New York City, where she got a job working as an assistant to Greta Garbo. She later changed […]

James Wheaton (1924 - 2002)

James Wheaton (January 11, 1924 – June 9, 2002), was an American motion picture and television actor. He may be best known as the voice actor “OMM” in George Lucas’s THX 1138, a role for which he was chosen over Orson Welles. Wheaton also appeared in Trouble Comes to Town and Sanford and Son. In the […]

Stratford Johns (1925 - 2002)

Johns was born in Pietermaritzburg and grew up in South Africa, where his parents had emigrated. After serving in the South African navy during World War II, Johns worked for a time in accountancy, but soon became involved in amateur theatre. In 1948, he bought a one-way ticket to Britain and learned his craft working in […]

Tony Martinez (1920 - 2002)

Martínez came to New York City to study at the Juilliard School at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts. He also studied acting and gained small parts in several films in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1954, he made his first television appearance as himself on The Colgate Comedy Hour, again as himself. […]

Daniel Gélin (1921 - 2002)

Gélin was born in Angers, Maine-et-Loire into a Jewish family, the son of Yvonne (Le Méner) and Alfred Ernest Joseph Gélin. When he was ten, his family moved to Saint-Malo where Daniel went to college until he was expelled for ‘uncouthness’. His father then found him a job in a shop that sold cans of […]

Dave King (1970 - 1929)

Born David Kingshott in Twickenham, Middlesex, England, King left school at 12 and joined the Morton Fraser Harmonica Gang at 15. He did his National Service in the RAF and was in the unit’s repertory company, returning to variety on demob and later becoming a solo act. An appearance on Television Music Hall led to […]

Nathan Juran (1907 - 2002)

Juran was born to a Jewish family in Gura Humorului, Romania. In 1912, he immigrated to America with his family, settling in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the University of Minnesota. He also spent a summer studying at the École des Beaux-Arts before earning a master’s degree in Architecture from […]

Astrid Lindgren (1907 - 2002)

Astrid Lindgren grew up in Näs, near Vimmerby, Småland, Sweden, and many of her books are based on her family and childhood memories and landscapes. Lindgren was the daughter of Samuel August Ericsson and Hanna Jonsson. She had two sisters, Stina and Ingegerd, and a brother, Gunnar Ericsson, who eventually became a member of the Swedish […]

Signe Hasso (1915 - 2002)

Signe Eleonora Cecilia Larsson was born in the Kungsholmen parish of Stockholm, Sweden in 1915. She debuted at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1927 at the age of 12. In 1933, she made her first film, Tystnadens hus, with German film director/cameraman Harry Hasso, whom she subsequently married. In 1940, she moved to the United States, […]