Actors We Lost Far Too Soon

Hollywood loves the young and beautiful, and it's all too easy to think of our favorite stars as being immortal up on the big screen. Sadly, that isn't the case. In fact, although we've seen plenty of Hollywood legends build incredible award-winning careers over decades on their way to passing away peacefully at a ripe old age, actors are really just like everyone else—we never really know when our time is going to be up, and over the years, a number of promising young actors have given us sobering reminders of just how fragile life can be. With that in mind, we're taking the opportunity to pay tribute here to a number of the most talented performers who said goodbye long before anyone could have expected. From private tragedies to terrible accidents, here's a fond look back at just a few of the actors we've lost far too soon.

Skye McCole Bartusiak isn't anywhere near as well-known as some of the other names on this list, but she compiled an incredible repertoire of credits during her too-brief career, especially considering she was only 21 when she succumbed to an accidental drug overdose in 2014. A mere 7 years old when she booked a role in The Cider House Rules, Bartusiak went on to star alongside such famous names as Mel Gibson (The Patriot), Michael Douglas (Don't Say a Word), and Hilary Swank (a stage adaptation of The Miracle Worker). Along the way, she also appeared in a supporting role on 24 and was nominated three times for a Young Artist Award.

According to Bartusiak's mother, who spoke with reporters after Skye's passing, the young star had been planning to move into directing and producing before she died. Opening a painful window into the family's final moments with her, Bartusiak's mother described the valiant efforts of emergency medical personnel as they tried in vain to revive her. "They were working on her for 45 minutes and could not get a heartbeat," she said. "I've done CPR on that kid more than one time and it just didn't work this time."

An action movie veteran who served as a cornerstone of the Fast and The Furious franchise, Paul Walker had broader ambitions beyond starring in your average shoot-'em-up thriller. While helping bring the Fast & Furious movies to global popularity, he branched out with projects like the Hurricane Katrina-inspired Hours and the ensemble comedy Pawn Shop Chronicles. There's really no telling what he might have been able to accomplish if he'd somehow survived the tragic car crash that took his life at the age of 40 in November 2013.

Seeking in part to focus attention on automobile safety, Walker's daughter Meadow filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Porsche. "The bottom line is that the Porsche Carrera GT is a dangerous car," the family's attorney told reporters. "It doesn't belong on the street. And we shouldn't be without Paul Walker or his friend, Roger Rodas." The suit was settled in late 2017, although the terms of the agreement were kept confidential.

Heath Ledger got his start on Australian TV, but for worldwide audiences, their first glimpse of his gifts came courtesy of the 1999 teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You. Ledger's work as the brooding teen Patrick Verona, while certainly one of the movie's highlights, didn't really hint at the depth of his talent, which was only exposed after he shrugged off his shot at Hollywood hunkdom in favor of taking on more challenging parts in pictures like Monster's Ball and Brokeback Mountain. For many, Ledger's defining role came as the Joker in The Dark Knight, which netted him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar after his shocking death of an accidental prescription drug overdose in early 2008. Only 28 when he died, Ledger would certainly have gone on to even greater things.

It's a tribute to the quality of Ledger's too-brief body of work that ten years after his death, his life and legacy were honored with the documentary I Am Heath Ledger—an intimate look at the actor assembled partly using archival footage filmed by Ledger himself. As his sister Kate told the Los Angeles Times after its release, helping shepherd the film to completion helped heal a number of old wounds. "It's been quite a cathartic experience in many ways," she admitted. "Heath was a soul mate of mine, and we were incredibly close. It has brought a bit of closure for me. I'll never forget him and I'll never be the same ... but it's helped me, in a way, to move on."

River Phoenix got his start at the tender age of 10, and quickly found fame through memorable appearances in '80s movies like Stand by Me and Explorers. Tempted with teen idol status, Phoenix mostly avoided paycheck roles, focusing on less commercial films such as The Mosquito Coast, Little Nikita, and Running on Empty. But while he led a serious actor's life on the big screen, his personal affairs were sadly far more stereotypical for Young Hollywood. His dangerous habits caught up with him in the fall of 1993, when the 23-year-old Phoenix collapsed outside a Los Angeles club after overdosing on multiple drugs.

Phoenix's passing proved a cautionary tale in any number of ways. Aside from offering a sobering lesson to young would-be stars with a partying streak, it ended up serving as an agonizing example of what can happen to a movie when an actor dies during filming. Phoenix's final role, in a movie ultimately titled Dark Blood, languished unseen for over a decade—and when his own terminal diagnosis prompted director George Sluizer to finish the movie, he had to battle Phoenix's family to get it out. Dark Blood finally screened on the festival circuit in 2013, to largely positive reviews.

John Belushi's wild image was part of what audiences loved about him during his breakout years on Saturday Night Live. While that manic, outsized energy was great for SNL and Animal House, it was only part of a lifestyle that was far too intense to last. As Belushi's stardom continued to rise with 1980's Blues Brothers movie and a host of planned projects that would have highlighted his dramatic range, his chemical indulgences continued to worsen. Despite the best efforts of friends and loved ones concerned for his well-being, Belushi succumbed to a drug overdose in March of 1982, at the age of 33.

Cathy Evelyn Smith, an acquaintance of Belushi's later described by the Los Angeles Times as a "former rock groupie," faced murder charges for her role in his death—specifically the fact that she admitted furnishing the star with copious amounts of drugs, including 20 injections of cocaine and heroin over the last 24 hours of his life alone. "Every time you stuck a needle in someone's arm, you put their life at risk," said the judge who ultimately sentenced her to three years in prison in 1986. "And as a result of your actions, John Belushi is dead."

Chris Farley's infectious energy and ample girth provoked plenty of John Belushi comparisons after Farley joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in the spring of 1990. Sadly, the two stars also shared similarities offscreen, and like Belushi, Farley's SNL tenure was shadowed by concerns for his long-term health. In spite of his personal demons, Farley branched out into a promising film career that included the 1995 cult classic Tommy Boy, but after he was fired from SNL the same year, he never really came close to achieving his potential. Like Belushi, Farley was only 33 at his time of death, the sad result of a drug overdose in December 1997.

As highlighted by an Entertainment Weekly report filed days after Farley's death, the star seesawed between trying to get healthy—he was reportedly in and out of rehab "at least 17 times" over a two-year period—and pursuing his stated ambition to "live fast and die young." EW quoted a call girl who spent time with Farley just before his death, and her description of his behavior that day doubles as a bittersweet summary of his career. "I don't think he knew what he wanted," she shrugged. "You could just tell he was on a rampage. ... He just kept bouncing from room to room."

Arguably one of the greatest actors of his generation, Philip Seymour Hoffman carved out a solid niche for himself as one of Hollywood's "that guy" supporting players before getting a leg up from director Paul Thomas Anderson, who cast him in a series of productions starting with 1996's Hard Eight. As his profile rose, Hoffman bounced between arthouse dramas, mainstream comedies, and even blockbuster action pictures like Mission: Impossible III and the Hunger Games franchise. Sadly, he also struggled with substance abuse; and after more than 20 years of sobriety, he relapsed in 2013, overdosing on a mixture of drugs early the following year, at the age of 46.

"I wonder whether Phil somehow knew that he was going to die young," Hoffman's widow Mimi wrote in an emotionally searing 2017 essay for Vogue. "He never said those words, but he lived his life as if time was precious. Maybe he just knew what was important to him and where he wanted to invest his love. I always felt there was plenty of time, but he never lived that way."

Teen-oriented entertainments come in hot and slowly fade away, only to be replaced by the next thing, but in the early 2010s the big show on the air for young people was Glee. An innovative hourlong dramedy, it was also a musical, based around a motley crew of high school kids who come together to form a glee club and sing familiar and popular songs. It was nominated for many Emmys and made stars out of its young cast, particularly Lea Michele as Barbra Streisand-wannabe Rachel and Corey Monteith as her boyfriend, a good-hearted, lunkheaded jock-turned-singer named Finn. 

While Finn was a simple man, Monteith was not. Offscreen, he was a decade older than the teenager he played, and had already done a lot of living in the form of a struggle with substance abuse that he said led him to drop out of real-life high school. In July 2013, Monteith was found dead in a Vancouver hotel room, and a toxicology report revealed that his cause of death was a lethal combination of alcohol and heroin. Monteith was only 31 — the teen idol who could do comedy, drama, and sing still had a long, promising career ahead of him.

It's almost a guarantee that a remake isn't going to be as good as the original, but one of the better ones in recent years was the 2005 retread of The Bad News Bears. It probably helped that the director was Richard Linklater, helmer of films like Dazed and Confused and Boyhood, who cast lovable rogue Billy Bob Thornton as foul-mouthed, hard-drinking team manager Morris Buttermaker, and a delightful rookie actress named Sammi Kane Kraft as Amanda Whurlitzer, the team's star pitcher. Kraft, 13 at the time of the film's release, had never acted professionally, and got the part (originated by Tatum O'Neal in the 1976 Bad News Bears) thanks to her formidable baseball skills—she threw a 75 mph fastball at a casting call. After the film, Kraft played high school softball, enrolled in college, and started a folk rock band called Scary Girls. Then, late one night in October 2012, Kraft was riding in an Audi that struck a semi truck, which was then rear-ended. Kraft was pronounced dead at a Los Angeles hospital—she was 20.

Anton Yelchin built an eclectic filmography over the course of his too-brief career, but he certainly got the most attention for co-starring as Chekov in the rebooted Star Trek film franchise. Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in the original series, wasn't actually Russian, but that's something Yelchin could bring to his character. He was born in Russia during the Soviet Union era, but defected to the U.S. with his parents when he was still just a kid. In addition to the extremely financially successful and critically well-received Star Trek movies, Yelchin had earned good notice for his work in a variety of movies, including Green Room, Fright Night, and Charlie Bartlett. Yelchin was only just starting to emerge as a major talent with an equally impressive range when he died in 2016, the victim of a bizarre, single-vehicle car accident that occurred after he stepped out of his Jeep in his own driveway. The car rolled, and pinned him against a brick pillar. The Los Angeles County Coroner attributed his death to "blunt traumatic asphyxia." Yelchin was only 27 years old.

After the demise of Mork & Mindy in 1982, star Pam Dawber returned to TV in 1986 with a CBS sitcom called My Sister Sam. Dawber played a cool San Francisco photographer named Sam who opened up her hip loft to her plucky teenage sister, Patti. It may have initially been Dawber's show, but the breakout star was Rebecca Schaeffer, a 19-year-old actress with just a few bit parts to her credit when she landed the role of Patti. Thanks in part to a plum time slot between Kate & Allie and Newhart, My Sister Sam was a top 30 hit in its first season. Ratings tanked when the show was moved around the schedule in season 2, and My Sister Sam was canceled in 1988. It appeared that the 21-year-old Schaeffer's career would survive the quick rise and fall of her series, with a few gigs already in the hopper. That promising career was cut short, horrifyingly, by a stalker. An obsessive fan named Robert John Bardo hired a private detective to find Schaeffer's address, then went to Schaeffer's home on the morning of July 18, 1989 — where he shot and killed her.  

More than 20 years gone, Brandon Lee is best and most remembered for the terrible circumstances of his death as opposed to his acting work. That's too bad, because Lee had only just begun to show audiences his capabilities. After starring in enjoyable but slight action movies like Showdown in Little Tokyo and Rapid Fire, Lee won the title role in The Crow, based on the comic book of the same name by James O'Barr. Lee played the titular undead superhero, a dark angel who stalks the grimy, drug-and-crime infested city where he was murdered seeking revenge against the thugs that killed him and his fiancée. That plot line became sadly too close for comfort when Lee was killed on the set of The Crow due to an accident involving an improperly loaded prop gun.  At the time of his death in 1993, Lee was only 28 — four years younger than the age reached by his also gone-too-soon father, legendary martial arts superstar Bruce Lee.

Even if you've never seen any of the Poltergeist movies, you can probably identity the original movie's most indelible moments — including a pajama-clad, towheaded little girl entranced by the white noise coming out of a TV set, creepily warning her family "They're heeeeeeeeere!" Most kids can't handle watching a freaky-scary movie, let alone star in three of them, but Heather O'Rourke could and did, breaking out as the seven-year-old star of the first Poltergeist in 1982 and sticking around for a pair of sequels.

The Poltergeist franchise proved a study in diminishing returns, but there was no reason to expect anything but great things from O'Rourke's career. Sadly, in February 1988, she told her parents she had severe abdominal pain; they rushed her to Children's Hospital of San Diego, where doctors discovered that O'Rourke had intestinal stenosis, a condition that leads to chronic bowel obstructions, and that she'd probably unknowingly had it since birth. An obstruction in her system caused an infection, which led to sepsis, which sent her into fatal cardiac and pulmonary arrest. Beyond tragically, O'Rourke was only 12 years old.

Even on the densely packed comedy star training ground that was the late '70s/early '80s sketch comedy show SCTV Network (the cast included Dave Thomas, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, and Rick Moranis), John Candy was a standout. He went on to become one of the greatest comedy actors of all time, and he did it in what was, in hindsight, a shockingly short period of time: only about 15 years. Candy was just in so many great movies, all released in the '80s and early '90s, and endlessly rerun on many content-hungry burgeoning cable networks. His first major film role came as the Blues Brothers-tracking Burton Mercer in The Blues Brothers. Next came, in rapid succession, Stripes, National Lampoon's Vacation, Splash, Summer Rental, Spaceballs, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, The Great Outdoors, Uncle Buck, Home Alone, and Cool Runnings, to name a handful. He almost died doing what he loved — making a funny movie. Candy collapsed and died from a fatal heart attack after a day of filming on the movie Wagons East. Candy was just 43.

Actor Misty Upham, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, started acting in films in 2002, specializing in projects by Native American filmmakers about Native American life and issues, such as Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plans Indian, Skinwalkers, DreamKeeper, and Skins. Her breakout role came in the 2008 indie film Frozen River, in which Upham played a broke and desperate bingo parlor employee named Lila Littlewolf. She earned a slew of accolades from films festival and guilds, including Best Supporting Actress at the American Indian Film Festival, Best Newcomer by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, and, biggest of all, an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Female. Upham parlayed Frozen River into roles in some major, critically acclaimed Hollywood films, including Django Unchained and August: Osage County. Sadly, Upham's personal life wasn't so easy. She struggled with substance abuse and mental illness, and in October 2014, Upham, 32, disappeared. Her body was discovered in a ravine in rural Washington 11 days later.

John Cazale's face is a striking and familiar presence in several classics of 1970s Hollywood, a period of film renaissance notable for dark, complex projects sprung from the minds of visionary directors. Cazale, an accomplished theatrical actor, was apparently quite the muse to this new breed of auteurs, as his world-weary, hangdog, slightly menacing mug graced The Godfather, The Godfather Part II (he portrayed the doomed, two-faced Fredo Corleone), The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter. Of those five films, all were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture within a six-year period (1972–1978); both Godfathers and The Deer Hunter won. Those are also the only five movies in which Cazale acted. And yet, he only had an absolutely perfect acting resume because he died of cancer in 1978 at the age of 42. Who knows what other classic movies Cazale could have gone on to markedly improve with his performance?

Martial arts legend Bruce Lee made some of the best-loved kung fu movies of all time, and he seemed like he was only getting started in 1973, when he died of brain swelling at the age of 33. The Lee family's tragic history continued in 1993, when Lee's son Brandon was accidentally shot and killed while filming a scene during production on The Crow. Just 28 when he died, Brandon might have taken his father's legacy even further; instead, his death added another dark chapter to an already grim story.

The specter of mysterious untimely death has continue to hover over the Lee family for decades, much to the chagrin of their survivors. Bruce's widow Linda penned an angry letter to the Los Angeles Times in response to a 1998 report suggesting her husband was a marijuana addict who died after taking too much aspirin, attempting to debunk any questions surrounding what she described as a painstakingly investigated death. "Without going into every detail, let me rebut for those who wish to know the truth," she wrote. "Bruce died from cerebral edema caused by hypersensitivity to an ingredient in a prescription medication called Equagesic. This determination was made after an exhaustive, nine-day coroner's inquest during which the testimony of forensic pathologists from all over the world, who had studied every tissue in Bruce's body, was heard."

Sharon Tate's name will forever be associated with one of the darkest and most horrifying moments in American history — when Charles Manson and his cult-like "Family" terrorized Los Angeles with a series of murders in the summer of 1969. On August 9, Manson and four of his followers entered a home in the Benedict Canyon area of L.A. and killed the group of friends hanging out there. Among the victims: coffee heiress Abigail Folger, hairstylist to the stars Jay Sebring, and 26-year-old actress Sharon Tate, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. (Manson picked the house, rented by Tate and her new husband, director Roman Polanski, because a producer who once turned him down for a record deal lived there at one time.) The circumstances of Tate's death are bewilderingly sad and terrible; wondering "what could have been" as far as her acting career is concerned pales in importance. That said, she was a major star in the making. She'd already starred in two cult classics: The Fearless Vampire Killers and Valley of the Dolls, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for "Most Promising Newcomer."