U.S. Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who ran for president in 2008 as a maverick Republican and became a prominent critic of President Donald Trump, died August 25 at the age of 81. Alternatively affable and cantankerous, McCain had been in the public eye since the 1960s when, as a naval aviator, he was shot down during the Vietnam War and tortured by his North Vietnamese Communist captors. He was edged out by George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 but became his party's White House candidate eight years later. After gambling on political neophyte Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain lost to Obama, who became the first black U.S. president. Obama said in a statement that he and McCain, despite their different backgrounds and political views, shared a belief in American ideals. "We saw our political battles, even, as a privilege, something noble, an opportunity to serve as stewards of those high ideals at home, and to advance them around the world," Obama wrote.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who emerged as a combative anti-apartheid campaigner during her husband Nelson Mandela's decades in jail but whose reputation was later tarnished by allegations of violence, died April 2 at the age of 81. Madikizela-Mandela campaigned tirelessly for her husband's release from jail during the years of white minority rule and became a liberation hero in her own right. But her legacy was later tarnished. As evidence emerged in the dying years of apartheid of the brutality of her Soweto enforcers, known as the "Mandela United Football Club", some South Africans questioned her 'Mother of the Nation' sobriquet. Blamed for the killing of activist Stompie Seipei, who was found near her Soweto home with his throat cut, she was convicted in 1991 of kidnapping and assaulting the 14-year-old because he was suspected of being an informer. Her six-year jail sentence was reduced to a fine and a 2-year suspended sentence on appeal.
Former U.N. Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kofi Annan died August 18 at the age of 80, after decades of championing efforts to try to end protracted conflicts in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. After rising through the ranks of the United Nations, Annan served two terms as U.N. Secretary-General in New York from 1997-2006. His 10-year-old foundation promotes good governance and the transformation of African agriculture. "In many ways, Kofi Annan was the United Nations. He rose through the ranks to lead the organization into the new millennium with matchless dignity and determination," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, whom Annan had chosen to head the U.N. refugee agency, said in a statement. Annan and the United Nations shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to reform the world body and give priority to human rights issues. As head of U.N. peacekeeping operations, Annan was criticized for the world body's failure to halt the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s. As U.N. boss he was linked to peace efforts to reunite the divided island of Cyprus, submitting a reunification blueprint which was rejected in a referendum by Greek Cypriots in 2004. He staunchly opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and later served as the first U.N. envoy at the start of Syria's war, but quit after world powers failed to fulfill their commitments, saying: "I lost my troops on the way to Damascus." "The U.N. can be improved, it is not perfect but if it didn't exist you would have to create it," he told the BBC's Hard Talk during an interview for his 80th birthday in April, recorded at the Geneva Graduate Institute where he had studied. "I am a stubborn optimist, I was born an optimist and will remain an optimist."
Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen, the man who persuaded school-friend Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard to start what became the world's biggest software company, died October 15 at the age of 65. Allen left Microsoft in 1983, before the company became a corporate juggernaut, following a dispute with Gates, but his share of their original partnership allowed him to spend the rest of his life and billions of dollars on yachts, art, rock music, sports teams, brain research and real estate. Music-lover Allen had a list of high-profile friends in the entertainment business, including U2 singer Bono, but preferred to avoid the limelight at his compound on Mercer Island, across Lake Washington from Seattle, where he grew up. Allen remained loyal to the Pacific Northwest region, directing more than $1 billion to mostly local philanthropic projects, developing Seattle's South Lake Union tech hub that Amazon.com calls home and building the headquarters of his Allen Institute for Brain Science there. Gates described Allen as following the Microsoft partnership with a "second act" focused on strengthening communities and in a statement said, "I am heartbroken by the passing of one of my oldest and dearest friends."
Burt Reynolds, whose good looks and charm made him one of Hollywood's most popular actors as he starred in such films as "Deliverance," "The Longest Yard" and "Smokey and the Bandit" in the 1970s and 80s, died September 6 at age 82. At the peak of his career, Reynolds was one of the most bankable actors in the film industry, reeling off a series of box-office smashes until a career downturn in the mid-1980s. He rebounded in 1997 with an Oscar nomination for his supporting role as a porn director in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights" - a role Reynolds despised - and won an Emmy for his role in the 1990-1994 television series "Evening Shade." With his trademark mustache, rugged looks and macho aura, Reynolds was a leading male sex symbol of the 1970s. He famously appeared naked - reclining on a bearskin rug with his arm strategically positioned for the sake of modesty - in a centerfold in the women's magazine Cosmopolitan in 1972. Reynolds' personal life sometimes overshadowed his movies, including marriages that ended in divorce to actresses Loni Anderson and Judy Carne and romances with Sally Field and Dinah Shore, among others. His financial woes and his struggles with prescription pain medication also generated attention.
Joe Jackson, the patriarch of an American musical dynasty who started his son Michael and his Jackson 5 brothers on the road to stardom but also verbally and physically abused them, died June 28 at the age of 89. Jackson, who lived in Las Vegas and had been estranged from much of his family, had been suffering from cancer, according to media reports. The Jackson family was often riven by legal battles, jealousies, money disputes, Joe's philandering and allegations of child molestation against Michael, as well as Michael's eccentric lifestyle. Joe Jackson had tried careers as a boxer and a guitarist with little success in the 1950s. He was working as a crane operator at a steel plant in Gary, Indiana, when he took note of the musical talents of his sons. He called them the Jackson 5 and, with Michael as the precociously talented lead singer, they would become one of the world's top acts with a flashy stage show and irresistible pop songs. But it came at a price. As the group's manager, Jackson put his sons through long, regimented rehearsals. Michael, who died in 2009 at age 50 of a drug overdose, told interviewer Oprah Winfrey that he was so afraid of his father that he would sometimes vomit when he saw him.
James "Whitey" Bulger, who lived a double life as one of Boston's most notorious mobsters and as a secret FBI informant before going on the run for 16 years, was killed October 30 at the age of 89 at a federal prison in West Virginia. Bulger was convicted in August 2013 of 11 murders, among other charges and sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus five years. Prison had been something Bulger had gone to great lengths to avoid - killing potential witnesses, cultivating corrupt lawmen and living as a fugitive for 16 years. It all ended when a tip from a former Icelandic beauty queen led to his capture in June 2011 in Santa Monica, California, where he was living with a long-time girlfriend. Bulger and his Winter Hill gang had operated for more than two decades in the insular Irish-dominated South Boston neighborhood, engaging in loan sharking, gambling, extortion, drug dealing and murder. They did so with the tacit approval of an FBI agent who looked the other way when it came to Bulger's crimes so that he would supply information on other gangsters. Bulger, portrayed by Johnny Depp in the 2015 film "Black Mass," was feared for his short temper and brutality. Prosecutors said he strangled two women with his hands and tortured a man for hours before shooting him in the head with a machine gun.
Former Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne, who rescued the Italian and U.S. companies and built them into the world's seventh-largest carmaker, died July 25 at the age of 66. Marchionne rescued Fiat and Chrysler from bankruptcy after taking the wheel of the Italian carmaker in 2004 and he multiplied Fiat's value 11 times through 14 years of canny dealmaking. Marchionne achieved what many thought impossible, most notably his huge gamble just over a decade ago when he set in motion the marriage between the then-ailing Fiat with bankrupt U.S. rival Chrysler. It is now the world's seventh-largest carmaker and is debt-free. In the clubbish world of Italian business, where change often happens slowly and chief executives bend to the prevailing political wind, Marchionne stood out as an exception, taking on trade unions and rowing publicly with politicians. He pulled Fiat out of Confindustria, Italy's top business group, determined to negotiate directly with unions rather than pursue national wage bargaining. The trained accountant and lawyer was lauded even by competitors for his shrewd dealmaking which kept investors on board. Fiat's value grew more than tenfold, helped by the spin-offs of trucks and tractor maker CNH Industrial and supercar maker Ferrari.
Trinidad-born British author V.S. Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2001, died August 11 at age 85. Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, who began writing in the 1950s, won numerous coveted literary awards during his career during which he wrote critically acclaimed novels such as "A House for Mr Biswas", "In a Free State" and "A Bend in the River". Born in Trinidad in 1932 into an Indian family, Naipaul was raised in relative poverty. He moved to England at 18 after receiving a scholarship to University College, Oxford. He wrote his first novel while at Oxford, but it was not published. He left university in 1954 and found a job as a cataloguer in London's National Portrait Gallery. His first published novel, "The Mystic Masseur", written in 1955, was poorly received at first but the following year won the first of his literary awards, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize for young authors. He received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth in 1989. "When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day," he told Reuters in 2010.
Tom Wolfe, an early practitioner of "new journalism" who captured the mood and culture of America across five decades with books including "The Bonfire of the Vanities," "The Right Stuff," and "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," died May 14 at the age of 88. Wolfe's works - fiction and non-fiction alike - looked at realms ranging from the art world to Wall Street to 1960s hippie culture and touched on the issues of class, power, race, corruption and sex. "I think every living moment of a human being's life, unless the person is starving or in immediate danger of death in some other way, is controlled by a concern for status," Wolfe said in a Wall Street Journal interview. Wolfe came up with "radical chic" to brand pretentious liberals, the "me decade" to sum up the self-indulgence of the 1970s and the "right stuff" to quantify intangible characteristics of the first U.S. astronauts and their test pilot predecessors. He was never deterred by the fact that he often did not fit in with his research subjects, partly because he was such a sartorial dandy, known for his white suits.
Verne Troyer, the diminutive actor who starred in the Austin Powers movies' as "Mini Me," died April 21 at the age of 49. Troyer, who was 2 feet 8 inches (81 cm) tall, is best known for Austin Powers movies "The Spy Who Shagged Me" and "Austin Power in Goldmember." He also had the role of the goblin Griphook in the Harry Potter movies. Troyer's height was due to achondroplasia dwarfism, Variety reported. He once said that his parents "never treated me any different than my other average-sized siblings. I used to have to carry wood, feed the cows and pigs and farm animals." He was never trained as an actor, but while he was a telephone customer service worker, a friend told him that Hollywood producers were looking for someone to be a stunt double for a baby, Troyer told an entertainment news website, HollywoodChicago.com. He had more than 25 other film credits to his name, including roles in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "The Love Guru," and "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus."
Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, whose 1972 movie "Last Tango in Paris" shocked audiences with a notorious sex scene that came back to haunt him in his later years, died November 26 at the age of 77. "Last Tango," which starred Marlon Brando, was banned in several countries, including Italy, where it was not released for viewing until early 1987. It won Bertolucci an Oscar nomination and burnished his international reputation, but his follow-up "1900," a five-hour historical epic starring Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland and Burt Lancaster, marked the start of a lengthy period of commercial flops. He burst back with "The Last Emperor" in 1987, beautifully shot by his long-time cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, which took all nine Oscars for which it was nominated, reasserting Bertolucci's position as a filmmaker with a distinct vision. Born in Parma in central Italy, Bertolucci was the son of poet and film critic Attilio Bertolucci. He began writing poetry as a child and had his work published in magazines before his teens, winning a national poetry prize as a student in Rome.
Actress Sridevi, arguably Bollywood's first female superstar, died February 24 at the age of 54. Born as Shree Amma Yanger Ayyapan in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, she started acting at age four, appearing in several Tamil films in the 60's and 70's, and eventually dropping out of school for a career in the movies. She acted in Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu films, making her presence felt performing alongside leading men such as Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth.
Swedish DJ and record producer Avicii, one of the biggest stars of electronic dance music (EDM) in Europe, died April 20 at the age of 28. Avicii, whose real name is Tim Bergling, was known for international hits like "Wake Me Up" and "Hey Brother". He announced in 2016 that he was retiring from touring, but he kept making music and was nominated for a Billboard music award earlier in the week that he died. Avicii told Billboard magazine he decided to stop touring in 2016 for health reasons. Three years earlier, he underwent surgery for a ruptured appendix and a blocked gall bladder and in 2012, he was hospitalized with pancreatitis.
A powerful orator from humble beginnings and arguably Zimbabwe's most popular politician, Morgan Tsvangirai died February 20 at age 65. He came within a whisker of unseating Robert Mugabe only to be outmaneuvered and ultimately outlived by his long-time nemesis. At the peak of his career, the self-taught son of a brick-layer served as prime minister to Mugabe's president in a 2009-2013 unity government cobbled together after a disputed and violent election in which scores of his supporters were killed. His presence helped stabilize an economy in freefall but Mugabe reneged on pledges to overhaul the former British colony's partisan security forces and Tsvangirai was shunted back into his familiar role as opposition gadfly. A hefty electoral defeat in 2013, blamed in part on Tsvangirai's involvement in two sex scandals, put paid to his dreams of one day leading the southern African nation and three years later he revealed he was being treated for colon cancer. He died after 18 months of treatment in neighboring South Africa.
The eldest son of late Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, committed suicide on February 1 aged 68 after being treated for months for depression, Cuban state-run media reported. The nuclear scientist was also known as "Fidelito", or Little Fidel, because of how much he looked like his father. Fidelito, who had the highest public profile of all Castro's children, was born in 1949 out of his brief marriage to Mirta Diaz-Balart before he went on to topple a U.S.-backed dictator and build a communist-run state on the doorstep of the United States during the Cold War. Through his mother, Castro Diaz-Balart was the cousin of some of Castro's most bitter enemies in the Cuban American exile community, U.S. Representative Mario Diaz-Balart and former U.S. congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart. He was also the subject of a dramatic custody dispute between the two families as a child. Cuba scholars say his mother took him with her to the United States when he was aged five after announcing she wanted a divorce from Castro, while he was imprisoned for an attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago. Castro was able to bring Fidelito back to Cuba after the 1959 revolution. A multilingual nuclear physicist who studied in the former Soviet Union, Castro Diaz-Balart was head of Cuba's national nuclear program from 1980 to 1992, and spearheaded the development of a nuclear plant on the Caribbean's largest island until his father fired him. Fidelito had been working for his uncle President Raul Castro as a scientific counselor to the Cuban Council of State and Vice-president of the Cuban Academy of Sciences at the time of his death.
Dolores O'Riordan, the lead singer of Irish rock group The Cranberries, died January 15 at the age of 46. O'Riordan's distinctive Irish lilt and yodel helped fuel the Cranberries' rapid rise in the early 1990s with global hits "Linger", "Dreams" and "Zombie." The band went on to sell over 40 million records to become Ireland's second-best-selling rock band after U2.
French singer Charles Aznavour, who stole the hearts of millions with decades of haunting love songs, died October 1 aged 94. The singer, who sold more than 100 million records in 80 countries, began his career peddling his words and music to the Paris boulevardiers of the 40s and 50s - Edith Piaf, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Trenet. But it became evident that Aznavour himself best interpreted the bittersweet emotions of such songs as "Hier Encore" (Yesterday When I Was Young), "Apres l'Amour" (After Love) and "La Boheme." Others were "She" and "Formidable." Sometimes described as France's Frank Sinatra, Aznavour was born in Paris in 1924 to Armenian parents - his birth name Shahnour Aznavourian. In his autobiography, "Aznavour by Aznavour," he recalls that after a period trying to play the role of a tough guy, he was goaded one evening into climbing on the bandstand to sing. "There, I had a revelation. I saw that the girls looked at me much more, their eyes moist and their lips apart, than when I played a terror ... I was only 15 or 16, but I understood," he wrote.
Chef Joel Robuchon, who at one point had earned more than 30 Michelin stars across nearly two dozen restaurants on three continents, died August 6 at the age of 73. Named the "chef of the century" by the Gault et Millau cooking guide in 1990, Robuchon was regarded as a perfectionist, toiling to make even ordinary seeming dishes -- such as mashed potatoes -- the very best they could be. He came into his own in the 1980s and early 1990s, when gourmet food went global. He steadily expanded his fame, branching out from being one of Paris's most recognized three-star chefs to become a worldwide phenomenon. In France, Robuchon is regarded as a chef who ushered in an era of authenticity after the restraint of nouvelle cuisine. "The older I get, the more I realize the truth is: the simpler the food, the more exceptional it can be," he told Business Insider in an interview in 2014. "I never try to marry more than three flavours in one dish. I like walking into a kitchen and knowing that the dishes are identifiable and the ingredients within them easy to detect."
French fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy, an aristocrat who founded the house of Givenchy in the 1950s, becoming famous for dressing the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Grace Kelly, died March 10 at the age of 91. A commanding presence in fashion from the moment he presented his first collection in Paris at the age of 24, Givenchy became synonymous with elegance and an insouciant glamor. He designed the black dress Audrey Hepburn wore in "Breakfast at Tiffany's". His hallmark creations, including balloon-sleeved blouses and calf-length trousers with flared hems, were hailed in their time as airy alternatives to the tight waists and artificial curves of the then-dominant "New Look" of Christian Dior. After more than 30 years in charge, he sold his label to the French luxury goods group LVMH Moet Hennessy-Louis Vuitton in 1988, staying on under LVMH control before retiring in 1995.
Kate Spade, the designer who built a fashion empire on the popularity of her signature handbags before selling the brand, was found dead June 5 at the age of 55. Born Katherine Noel Brosnahan in Kansas City, Missouri, Spade was a former accessories editor at the now-closed Mademoiselle magazine before she and Andy Spade launched their namesake design company, Kate Spade New York, in 1993. The couple married the following year. They began by selling handbags before expanding to include clothing, jewelry, bedding, legwear and fragrances. The brand grew into a fashion empire, known for accessories that offered affordable luxury to younger working women. Her brightly colored, clean-lined style offered a spunky take on fashion at time when luxury handbags were out of reach to most consumers and the industry was dominated by venerable European brands. The couple sold their last stake in the brand in 2006 to focus on raising their daughter, Frances Beatrix Spade. In 2016, they launched a new footwear and accessories brand called Frances Valentine, naming it after their daughter, who is now 13. Tapestry Inc, the handbag company formerly known as Coach, eventually bought the Kate Spade brand in May 2017.
Ed King, a former lead guitarist for the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd who co-wrote one of the group's best known hits, "Sweet Home Alabama," died August 22 at age 68. King joined Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1972 not long after the band formed, and with two other lead guitarists, Gary Rossington and Allen Collins, helped create the group's powerful triple-guitar sound prominent on such rock classics as "Free Bird." King left the group in 1975, two years before a plane crash killed two of the band's members and a backup vocalist. King returned to Lynyrd Skynyrd when the band regrouped in 1987, and stayed until 1996. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the band in 2006. During his original stint, King co-wrote several songs, including 1974 hit "Sweet Home Alabama," a retort to Neil Young's "Southern Man." The California native previously played with the psychedelic rock band Strawberry Alarm Clock.
Actress Margot Kidder, best known for playing Lois Lane in the "Superman" films in the 1970s and 1980s, died May 13 at the age of 69. Canadian-born Kidder appeared in more than 70 movies and TV shows, including "The Great Waldo Pepper," "The Amityville Horror" and the 2014 children's TV series "R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour," for which she won an Emmy award. Kidder began her acting career in her 20s and shot to international fame playing the intrepid reporter Lois Lane in 1978's "Superman," opposite Christopher Reeve, and in three sequels.
Actor John Mahoney, best known for his role as Martin Crane, the cranky father of two psychiatrists on television series "Frasier," died February 4 at age 77. The British-born actor trained at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago as he was nearing age 40. Mahoney received two Emmy nominations for his role on "Frasier," and also won a Tony Award for best featured actor in a play for his performance in "The House of Blue Leaves."
Rusty Staub, a beloved slugger dubbed "Le Grand Orange" by fans of the Montreal Expos and later embraced as a team leader of the New York Mets, died March 29 at age 73 after a 23-year Major League Baseball career and a retirement devoted to charity. Staub was awarded spots on six All-Star teams over a career with five teams in which he compiled a solid .279 batting average, with 2,716 base hits, 292 home runs and 1,466 runs batted in. After baseball, Staub became restaurant owner and an active philanthropist and fundraiser.
