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Celebs Who Died In 2021 So Far

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The first half of 2021 took an unusually heavy toll on film, television, music, and the stage.

Nicki Swift’s rundown, “Celebs Who Died In 2021 So Far,” tallies a run of losses that hit almost every corner of entertainment in just six months — Oscar winners, sitcom regulars, a hip-hop pioneer, and a Disney voice actor among them. The video walks through who died, how, and what they left behind, and the list is longer and more sobering than most years produce by midsummer.

• Oscar-winning actor Christopher Plummer, star of The Sound of Music, died February 5 at 91; Emmy winner Jessica Walter (Arrested Development, Archer) died March 24 at 80.
• CNN’s Larry King, longtime host of Larry King Live, died January 23 at 87 from sepsis following a COVID-19-related hospitalization.
• DMX (Earl Simmons) died April 9 at 50 after a catastrophic cardiac arrest; Samuel E. Wright, the voice of Sebastian in The Little Mermaid, died May 24 at 74 from prostate cancer.

Film and Television Loses Its Icons

Cicely Tyson died January 28 at 96, just days after publishing her memoir Just As I Am — capping a career that stretched from Sounder to How to Get Away with Murder. Cloris Leachman, the Oscar winner best remembered as Phyllis on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, died January 27 at 94. Christopher Plummer’s death on February 5 at 91 closed out a stage-and-screen résumé that spanned more than seventy years, and Jessica Walter’s passing on March 24 at 80 ended a run that made her one of the most quotable straight-women in comedy, first on Arrested Development and then voicing Malory Archer on Archer.

Larry King’s death on January 23 closed the book on one of cable news’ longest-running franchises; Larry King Live ran on CNN for 25 years and put him across the table from presidents, mob bosses, and Marlon Brando alike. Charles Grodin, the deadpan character actor from Midnight Run and Beethoven, died May 18 at 86 from bone marrow cancer. And two names tied directly to ’90s teen TV closed out within months of each other: Dustin Diamond, Screech from Saved by the Bell, died February 1 at 44, while actor Ernie Lively died June 3 at 74.

Music Lost Voices Across Generations

DMX’s death on April 9 hit hip-hop especially hard — the 50-year-old rapper suffered a catastrophic heart attack that put him on life support for days before his family confirmed he’d died. Pop and gospel singer B.J. Thomas, known for “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” succumbed to lung cancer complications on May 29 at 78.

DMX’s cardiac arrest on April 2 kept him on life support for a week before his death was confirmed on April 9 — he was 50.

The losses stretched across eras and genres. Gerry Marsden, frontman of Gerry and the Pacemakers, died January 3. Tawny Kitaen, the 1980s music video fixture known for Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again,” died May 7. Pervis Staples, co-founder of the Staple Singers, died May 6.

A Broadway and Disney Voice Falls Silent

Samuel E. Wright’s death on May 24 at 74 closed out a career best known for one role: he originated the voice of Sebastian the crab in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, singing “Under the Sea” and “Kiss the Girl” in a performance generations of kids grew up on. He died from complications of prostate cancer, and his loss sits alongside the other Disney-adjacent deaths of the stretch as a reminder of how much of 2021’s toll landed on people who’d shaped decades of family entertainment rather than headline-grabbing blockbusters.

Taken together, the run of deaths documented in Nicki Swift’s video — much like the pattern examined in The Chilling Connection Between All These Celebs That Died Young — reads as one of the roughest six-month stretches Hollywood and the music business have had in recent memory, and for fans of Saved by the Bell, Dustin Diamond’s death is the one covered in more detail over at Stars From Saved By The Bell You Might Not Know Died. With half the year still to go as of this tally, the list was already long enough that Nicki Swift’s video needed every minute of runtime just to get through it.