The feisty red-headed star of Miracle on 34th Street and The Quiet Man; the terrifying menace of countless Hammer horror films; the exotic leading man who roamed the Arabian desert and the Russian steppes; and TV’s most famous alien. As the book closes on 2015, we at MovieFanFare would like to take a moment to look back on and pay tribute to the notable men and women–actors, directors, writers and more–who passed away during the past year:
Belgian director Chantal Akerman (A Couch in New York), 65.
Italian-born actress Laura Antonelli, sexy star of L’Innocente and Wifemistress, 95.
Film and TV actor James Best (Ride Lonesome, TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard), 88.
Oscar- and Tony-nominated actor Theodore Bikel (The Defiant Ones, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming), 91.
Best-selling author Jackie Collins (The Bitch, Hollywood Wives), 77.
Former Disney child star Kevin Corcoran (The Shaggy Dog, Toby Tyler), 66.
Dancer-turned-actress Yvonne Craig, best known as TV’s Batgirl, 78.
Film director Wes Craven, the man behind the Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream franchises, 76.
Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, whose remarkable career began in 1930 and continued well past his 100th birthday, 106.
Actress Donna Douglas (Frankie and Johnny, TV’s The Beverly Hillbillies), 82.
Actress Betsy Drake, whose brief resumé included two films opposite then-husband Cary Grant, 92.
Emmy-winning actor Richard Dysart (Being There, TV’s L.A. Law), 86.
Swedish screen siren Anita Ekberg (4 for Texas, La Dolce Vita), 83.
Writer/ad man/Looney Tunes cartoon voice actor Stan Freberg, 88.
Film producer Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., founder of the eponymous indie studio, 88.
Actress Coleen Gray (Nightmare Alley, The Killing), 92.
John Guillermin, director of such actioners as The Towering Inferno and 1976’s King Kong, 89.
Horror actor Gunnar Hansen, best known as Leatherface in the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 68.
Oscar-winning film composer James Horner (Braveheart, Titanic), 61.
Indian-born character actor Saeed Jaffrey (The Man Who Would Be King, A Passage to India), 86.
Dean Jones, star of such live-action ’60s/’70s Disney comedies as The Love Bug and That Darn Cat, 84.
Suave leading man Louis Jourdan (Gigi, Swamp Thing, Three Coins in the Fountain), 93.
Actor Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen on TV’s The Adventures of Superman), 87.
Iconic screen villain Christopher Lee, who played Dracula and Sherlock Holmes and appeared in the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings films, 93.
Actress Joan Leslie (High Sierra, Yankee Doodle Dandy), 90.
Actor Patrick Macnee, the always-dapper secret agent John Steed of TV’s The Avengers, 93.
Screenwriter Melissa Mathison (The Black Stallion, E.T. the Extraterrestrial), 65.
Documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles, whose works with his brother David included Grey Gardens and Salesman, 88.
Jayne Meadows, TV/film actress (Enchantment) and wife of Steve Allen, 95.
Comedienne/actress Anne Meara (Fame), wife of Jerry Stiller and mother of Ben Stiller, 85.
Actor Martin Milner (Life with Father, TV’s Route 66 and Adam 12), 83.
TV Actor Al Molinaro (Happy Days, The Odd Couple), 96.
Actor Ron Moody, an Oscar nominee for his performance as Fagin in 1968’s Oliver!, 91.
Ex-child star Dickie Moore, an Our Gang alumnus who gave Shirley Temple her first screen kiss in Miss Annie Rooney, 89.
Leonard Nimoy, who went from playing Mr. Spock on the original Star Trek to directing such hit films as Three Men and a Baby, 83.
Irish-born leading lady Maureen O’Hara, who was rescued by Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and spanked by John Wayne in McLintock!, 95.
Film/TV actress Betsy Palmer (Queen Bee), who gained new fame in the 1980s as Jason Voorhees’ mother in Friday the 13th, 88.
English actress Nova Pilbeam, who co-starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and Young and Innocent, 95.
Quintessential pro wrestling heel-turned-action film star “Rowdy” Roddy Piper (They Live), 61.
Emmy-winning actor Alex Rocco, best known as Moe Greene in The Godfather, 79.
Film noir femme fatale Lizabeth Scott (Dead Reckoning, Pitfall, Too Late for Tears), 92.
Egyptian-born actor Omar Sharif, whose played the title role in Doctor Zhivago and co-starred in Funny Girl and Lawrence of Arabia, 83.
Striptease legend and occasional actress Blaze Starr, subject of the 1989 Paul Newman film Blaze, 83.
Actor Rod Taylor, Australian-born star of The Time Machine and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, 84.
Actor (TV’s Law and Order) and former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson, 73.
Uggie, the lovable Jack Russell Terrier from the Oscar-winning film The Artist, 13.
TV and film actor Dick Van Patten, who played memorable fathers in Eight Is Enough and Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs, 86.
Actor Gregory Walcott, forever famous as the hero in Ed Wood’s 1959 cult classic Plan 9 from Outer Space, 87.
Producer Jerry Weintraub (Nashville, both versions of The Karate Kid, 2001’s Ocean’s 11), 77.
Oscar-winning cinematographer (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Bound for Glory) and director Haskell Wexler, 93.
Tony-winning stage/TV/film actress Elizabeth Wilson (The Graduate, 9 to 5), 94.
Warhol Factory superstar and transgender actress Holly Woodlawn (Trash, TV’s Transparent), 69.
Lantern-jawed screen heavy and direct-to-video icon Robert Z’Dar (Samurai Cop), 64.
Click on their names here to read our full-length tributes to Theodore Bikel, Wes Craven, Anita Ekberg, Dean Jones, Louis Jourdan, Christopher Lee, Leonard Nimoy, Maureen O’Hara, Betsy Palmer, Lizabeth Scott, Omar Sharif and Rod Taylor. Please feel free to share your memories of the above people–or recall any 2015 Hollywood deaths we may have overlooked–in the comments below.