gone too soon
by alexandre-lahitte64 | created - 9 months ago | updated - 1 month ago | Public1. Steve McQueen
Actor | The Great Escape
He was the ultra-cool male film star of the 1960s, and rose from a troubled youth spent in reform schools to being the world's most popular actor. Over 40 years after his untimely death from mesothelioma in 1980, Steve McQueen is still considered hip and cool, and he endures as an icon of popular ...
2. John Garfield
Actor | Four Daughters
John Garfield was born Jacob Julius Garfinkle on the Lower East Side of New York City, to Hannah Basia (Margolis) and David Garfinkle, who were Jewish immigrants from Zhytomyr (now in Ukraine). Jules was raised by his father, a clothes presser and part-time cantor, after his mother's death in 1920,...
3. Leslie Howard
Actor | Pygmalion
Leslie Howard Steiner was born in London to Lilian (Blumberg) and Ferdinand "Frank" Steiner. His father was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, and his English mother was of German Jewish and mostly English descent. Leslie went to Dulwich College, then worked as a bank clerk until the outbreak of World ...
4. Carole Lombard
Actress | My Man Godfrey
Carole Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on October 6, 1908. Her parents divorced in 1916 and her mother took the family on a trip out West. While there they decided to settle down in the Los Angeles area. After being spotted playing baseball in the street with the ...
5. Philip Seymour Hoffman
Actor | The Master
Film and stage actor and theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman was born in the Rochester, New York, suburb of Fairport to Marilyn (Loucks), a lawyer and judge, and Gordon Stowell Hoffman, a Xerox employee, and was mostly of German, Irish, English and Dutch ancestry. After becoming involved in ...
6. Tyrone Power
Actor | Witness for the Prosecution
Tyrone Power was one of the great romantic swashbuckling stars of the mid-twentieth century, and the third Tyrone Power of four in a famed acting dynasty reaching back to the eighteenth century. His great-grandfather was the first Tyrone Power (1795-1841), a famed Irish comedian. His father, known ...
7. Montgomery Clift
Actor | From Here to Eternity
Edward Montgomery Clift (nicknamed 'Monty' his entire life) was born on October 17, 1920 in Omaha, Nebraska, just after his twin sister Roberta (1920-2014) and eighteen months after his brother Brooks Clift. He was the son of Ethel "Sunny" Anderson (Fogg; 1888-1988) and William Brooks Clift (1886-...
8. Lon Chaney
Actor | He Who Gets Slapped
Although his parents were deaf, Leonidas Chaney became an actor and also owner of a theatre company (together with his brother John). He made his debut at the movies in 1912, and his filmography is vast. Lon Chaney was especially famous for his horror parts in movies like e.g. Quasimodo in The ...
9. Patrick Dewaere
Actor | Un mauvais fils
Popular but troubled renegade French actor Patrick Dewaere was christened Jean-Marie Patrick Bourdeaux on January 26, 1947, at Saint-Brieuc in Britanny in the north-west region of France. The third of six children born to actress Mado Maurin (1915-2011), his mother made acting a family affair. All ...
10. Romy Schneider
Actress | L'important c'est d'aimer
Romy Schneider was born on 23 September 1938 in Vienna, Austria into a family of actors. Making her film debut at the age of 15, her breakthrough came two years later in the very popular trilogy Sissi (1955). Her mother, supervising her daughter's career, immediately approved Romy's participation ...
11. Gérard Philipe
Actor | Fanfan la tulipe
In 1940 Gerard left school and his parents wanted him be a lawyer. But soon his mother noticed that he was only interested in acting, although his father was against the idea. After timely intervention from Marc Allégret, who decided he showed some promise, Gerard's debut was in Claude Dauphin's ...
12. Errol Flynn
Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood
Errol Flynn was born to parents Theodore Flynn, a respected biologist, and Marrelle Young, an adventurous young woman. Young Flynn was a rambunctious child who could be counted on to find trouble. Errol managed to have himself thrown out of every school in which he was enrolled. In his late teens ...
13. Jean Seberg
Actress | À bout de souffle
Jean Dorothy Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, to substitute teacher Dorothy Arline (Benson) and pharmacist Edward Waldemar Seberg. Her father was of Swedish descent and her mother was of English and German ancestry.
One month before her 18th birthday, Jean landed the title role in Otto ...
14. Natalie Wood
Actress | Rebel Without a Cause
Natalie Wood was an American actress of Russian and Ukrainian descent. She started her career as a child actress and eventually transitioned into teenage roles, young adult roles, and middle-aged roles. She drowned off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981 at age 43.
Wood was born July 20, 1938 in ...
15. Laird Cregar
Actor | The Lodger
Seemingly suave, cultivated actor by nature, definitely huge in both talent and girth, and capable of playing much older than he was, Hollywood of the early '40s tragically lost Laird Cregar before it could fully comprehend on how to best utilize his obvious gifts. He was born Samuel Laird Cregar ...
16. Jean Harlow
Actress | China Seas
Harlean Carpenter, who later became Jean Harlow, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 3, 1911. She was the daughter of a successful dentist and his wife. In 1927, at the age of 16, she ran away from home to marry a young businessman named Charles McGrew, who was 23. The couple pulled up ...
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