Gregg Toland

popular name: Francis Lederer

date_of_death: May 25, 2000

age: 100

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Francis Lederer was an Austro-Hungarian Empire-born American film and stage actor with a successful career, first in Europe, then in the United States. Lederer's career spanned the century from ''Pandora's Box,'' the 1929 German silent film in which Louise Brooks made a scandalous splash as Lulu the prostitute, to the television series ''Mission Impossible'' and ''Night Gallery,'' in which he played guest roles four decades later. He also played assorted rogues, charmers, horror villains and a Nazi spy opposing Edward G. Robinson in the 1939 Warner Brothers drama, ''Confessions of a Nazi Spy.'' In ''Midnight,'' Billy Wilder's 1939 comedy that starred Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert, Mr. Lederer played a typical part: Jacques Picot, a gigolo attached to Mary Astor. In its review at the time, Variety said Mr. Lederer was ''aptly cast as the love pirate.'' With a slight accent and silken air, he played a philandering actor who accidentally kisses Ida Lupino in a darkened theater in ''One Rainy Afternoon'' (1936) and a sinister valet who stalks Paulette Goddard in Jean Renoir's ''Diary of a Chambermaid'' (1946). Aside from his stage and screen work, Lederer did a great deal of television, for which he adapted Ibsen's A Doll's House, and was the chief villain in the first Mission Impossible (1967). He also taught acting for many years, helped found the American National Academy of Performing Arts and the Holly wood museum, was active in civic affairs, and made a fortune from property.

popular name: Kirk Douglas

date_of_death: February 5, 2020

age: 103

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: The story of Kirk Douglas is the story of how an epitome of underprivilege had become world famous – recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur, fulfilling the roles of Van Gogh, Spartacus, Doc Holliday, a one-eyed Viking chieftain, and Jonathan Shields in The Bad and the Beautiful, that model of Hollywood confidence, arrogance and alchemy who knows that being bad has its own fatal allure. Kirk Douglas was a legendary American actor and filmmaker. After an impoverished childhood, he made his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war films. Douglas played an unscrupulous boxing hero in Champion (1949), which brought him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. His other early films include Out of the Past (1947); Young Man with a Horn (1950), playing opposite Lauren Bacall and Doris Day; Ace in the Hole (1951); and Detective Story (1951), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. He received his second Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), opposite Lana Turner, and earned his third for portraying Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), a role for which he won the Golden Globe for the Best Actor in a Drama. He also starred with James Mason in the adventure 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), a large box-office hit. During his career, he appeared in more than 90 films and was known for his explosive acting style. He was named by the American Film Institute the 17th-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood cinema.

popular name: Leonard Nimoy

date_of_death: February 27, 2015

age: 83

cause_of_death: Complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: After leaving Boston and a short stint in the Army, Leonard Nimoy pursued his passion of acting and appeared early in his career in such films as Queen for a Day, Rhubarb, Monk Baroni, Zombies of the Stratosphere, Them! and The Brain Eaters. He then made appearances in TV sitcoms such as Dragnet, Sea Hunt, Wagon Train and Bonanza. However it was in 1966 when Nimoy began his tenure for his Emmy Award-nominated portrayal of Spock, the half Human, half Vulcan first officer and science officer aboard the USS Enterprise in Star Trek. From the first TV episode in 1966 to the film Star Trek Into Darkness in 2013, Nimoy played one of the most revered characters in science fiction.