Celebrity deaths: Stars we lost in 2023
This year a number of our most iconic and beloved stars from music, TV and film took their final bow. We reflect on the famous lives they lived.
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During 2023, a number of our most iconic and beloved stars took a final bow. From Barry Humphries to Matthew Perry, we reflect on some famous lives very well lived.
BARRY HUMPHRIES
“Hello, possums!” With his gladioli-waving, “housewife from Moonee Ponds” creation, Dame Edna Everage, Barry Humphries took Australia to the world. And we were never the same.
In a seven-decade career spanning theatre, television, books and film, Humphries was lauded for his transgressive humour, taking the mickey out of Australian culture with his cast of characters, some of which would end up being among the most-loved comedic creations of all time.
Alongside Dame Edna, there was Sir Les Patterson, the vulgar and drunk Australian cultural attache; the decent (and occasionally senile) Sandy Stone; and the archetypal Aussie bloke Barry McKenzie.
But it was Dame Edna who would win the hearts of the Royal Family, Hollywood celebrities and the rest of us.
She became a global icon, hosting her own talk shows (although check out her hilarious appearances on Parkinson on YouTube), an appearance on Saturday Night Live and a recurring role on the 1990s drama Ally McBeal.
Humphries described Everage and Patterson in particular as “wonderful outlets. I’m very careful myself about what I might say. Edna and Sir Les, on the other hand, can point to the nudity of the emperor.”
Humphries died in Sydney in April following complications from hip surgery. He was 89.
MATTHEW PERRY
The Friends star, who played the anxiety-ridden, wisecracking Chandler Bing for a decade on the iconic sitcom was found dead in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home on October 28. He was just 54.
In reality, Perry’s own neuroses weren’t that far removed from his famous character – only much darker. He was open about his long-term struggles with drugs and alcohol, which plagued him throughout his life, even admitting that he could tell whether he was hooked on drink or drugs by his appearance in each season of Friends.
During the show’s 2021 reunion, Perry gave an insight into the anxiety he felt playing Chandler.
“I felt like I was gonna die if [the studio audience] didn’t laugh. And it’s not healthy for sure, but I would sometimes say a line and they wouldn’t laugh — and I would sweat and just go into convulsions if I didn’t get the laugh I was supposed to get. I would freak out …. I felt like that every single night.”
In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Terrible Big Thing, Perry said he had been to 6000 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and in rehab 15 times. In 2017, his colon burst due to sustained opioid abuse.
Perry wrote of the loneliness he experienced during his cycles of substance abuse and recovery and worked hard to help others doing the same.
“The best thing about me, bar none, is that if somebody comes to me and says, ‘I can’t stop drinking, can you help me?’ I can say ‘yes’ and follow up and do it,” he said in a 2022 interview.
“When I die, I don’t want Friends to be the first thing that’s mentioned. I want that to be the first thing that’s mentioned. And I’m gonna live the rest of my life proving that.”
TINA TURNER
One of music’s greatest ever performers, Tina Turner was also a beacon for resilience and overcoming hardship.
The Tennessee-born Turner survived poverty and endured years of emotional and physical abuse from ex-husband and bandmate, Ike Turner.
The duo performed as the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, releasing hits such as River Deep – Mountain High, Proud Mary, and Nutbush City Limits, before disbanding in 1976 when she left him in the middle of the night with just 36 cents in her pocket.
Turner remained in the wilderness for years before launching one of music’s greatest ever comebacks in the 1980s (with the help of Aussie manager, Roger Davies), which culminated in Grammy Awards for the classic 1984 album Private Dancer (featuring the mega hits What’s Love Got to Do With It and Better Be Good To Me) and a best-selling memoir, I, Tina.
She also appeared alongside Mel Gibson in the 1985 film, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
In the 1990s, an Oscar-winning film based on her life was released and she became the face of Rugby League in Australia after her classic song was The Best was used to promote the code, culminating in an unforgettable performance at the NRL Grand Final in Sydney in 1993.
After years of ill health, Turner died in May at the age of 83 at her home in Switzerland where she had lived with German husband Erwin Bach for close to 30 years.
SINEAD O’CONNOR
The Irish singer, who possessed one of the most haunting voices of the 20th century, shot to global superstardom in 1990 with a cover of Prince’s Nothing Compares to U.
Her life would never be the same.
The album – her second – I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got sold more than seven million copies worldwide, while Nothing Compares to U was considered one of the great modern pop songs.
O’Connor became a massive pop star, touring the world, her face on the cover of magazines, but she was honest about the fact that fame didn’t suit her personality, and she refused to play the game expected of her.
“I didn’t want to be a pop star, I wanted to be a protest singer,” she later said.
Throughout her career she would draw attention to child abuse, racism, women’s rights and homophobia.
Indeed, her most famous protest came in 1992 when she ended an appearance on US sketch show Saturday Night Live by tearing a photo of Pope John Paul II in half to protest sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
It would change the trajectory of her career, which effectively ended in the US after the SNL incident.
Ultimately, she recorded 10 studio albums, but none came close to the popularity of I Do Not Want …
Throughout the years she was candid about her debilitating mental health struggles, regularly posting online when she was struggling to cope and she was left devastated by the death of her 17-year-old son, Shane, in 2022.
Despite posting a video in early July where she appeared happy after moving back to London after 23 years (an Australian tour and new music were also in the works), O’Connor was found dead in her London flat in July. While no official cause of death was given, police were not treating her death as suspicious. She was 56.
TONY BENNETT
The legendary crooner, who bridged generations and found a new, younger late-career audience thanks to collaborations with the likes of Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse, died in July at the age of 96.
Bennett, who had a professional career spanning eight decades and a US number one album at age 85, was once described by Frank Sinatra as “the greatest popular singer in the world”.
A masterful vocalist, he was perhaps best known for the 1962 classic, I Left My Heart in San Francisco.
Winner of 18 Grammy Awards (with 36 total nominations), and a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient in 2001, Bennett also won two Emmy Awards.
In later years, he became popular with younger audiences, singing alongside the late Amy Winehouse on the classic, Body and Soul. He released a duets album with Diana Krall and two albums with is great friend, Lady Gaga. The two also toured together.
Bennett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016 but continued to perform until 2021.
His last public appearance came with Lady Gaga at New York’s famed Radio City Music Hall in August 2021, two months before his last release, the Bennett-Gaga album, Love for Sale, the sequel to their chart-topping 2014 recording, Cheek to Cheek.
MICHAEL PARKINSON
The legendary British broadcaster and chat show was ubiquitous on UK and Australian screens, interviewing the world’s biggest stars in a career that spanned seven decades.
He interviewed the world’s most famous faces including actors, musicians, sportspeople, royalty and politicians.
Indeed, the likes of Muhammad Ali, David Beckham, Elton John, Madonna, Tom Cruise and Robert De Niro have all sat down with the man affectionately known as “Parky”.
Parkinson began as a journalist on local newspapers before moving into TV in the 1960s.
He landed his own show, the BBC’s Parkinson in 1971, which initially ran for 11 years and then returned between 1998 and 2007.
Parkinson loved Australia – his “second home” – and was a frequent visitor to our shores, recording the series Parkinson in Australia from 1979 to 1982 but to also indulge in his passion for cricket.
He worked in Australia at various times until 2014, and he would sit down with some of our biggest names including Mel Gibson, Bob Hawke, Shane Warne, Kylie Minogue and Kerry Packer.
During his final show in 2007, he was joined by “all-time favourite” Dame Edna Everage, fighting back tears as he was given a thundering farewell from the audience. He was knighted by the Queen the following year and continued to write and appear on TV and radio.
Parkinson died in August following a “brief illness”. He was 88.
DOUG MULRAY
The veteran entertainer and radio identity, Doug Mulray – who was affectionately known as “Uncle Doug” – died in March at the age of 71 after a long illness.
During the 1980s, Mulray was Australian radio’s biggest name, ruling the commercial airwaves with his cheeky persona and stunts. But he became infamous when the TV show he fronted – Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos – was famously pulled off air by Channel 9 owner Kerry Packer after just 34 minutes.
In 1992, Packer famously called his own network, blasting “Get that s**t off the air” after he saw clips of animals fornicating and a boy pulling the testicles of a kangaroo, accompanied by Mulray’s commentary. The show was replaced by an episode of Cheers and it would be a decade before Mulray appeared on Nine again.
Andrew Denton – who credited Mulray for influencing his own humour – paid tribute to the comedy legend, describing him as the “true original”: “if the world is a glass of water – he is a Berocca”.
When Sydney-born Mulray was inducted into the Commercial Radio Australia Hall of Fame in 2019 he joked “it was about time”.
“A recognition of 15 years of partying really, imagine getting an award for having a good time, remarkable really.”
ROLF HARRIS
For half a century Rolf Harris was one of Australia and Britain’s most celebrated entertainers until his career ended in disgrace and incarceration after being jailed as a sex offender in 2014.
He sold millions of records with songs such as Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, Sun Arise, Two Little Boys, and an unexpected reworking of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, which were hits in both Australia and the UK. He introduced audiences to the joys of such musical instruments as the Stylophone, the didgeridoo and the wobble board, the last his own creation.
He was an accomplished artist, even painting an official portrait of the Queen in 2005, was awarded an OBE in Britain in 1977 and, as late as 2012, was made an Officer of the order of Australia.
But behind the loveable onscreen persona lurked a dark side; in March 2013, Harris was arrested over allegations of sexual offences. He was jailed in 2014 for five years and nine months for 12 counts of indecent assault that took place between 1968 and 1986, on four female victims, including a 13-year-old schoolfriend of his daughter. He served only three years and was released in 2017. He was rarely seen in public after his release. He died in May at the age of 93 without ever apologising to his victims.
CAL WILSON
Cal Wilson, the New Zealand comedian who became a staple on Australian television over the past 20 years, died in October after a short illness. She was 53.
Wilson began her career in New Zealand in 1990 as a founding member of the improv group The Court Jesters. In 1994, she won the world theatresports title as part of the New Zealand team.
In 2000 she was named best comedian by the Auckland-based magazine Metro.
Wilson moved to Melbourne in 2003, two years after winning the best newcomer award at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, where she would become a regular fixture, eventually performing 14 shows over her career. Wilson began appeared regularly on Aussie comedy shows including Rove Live, Spicks and Specks and Good News Week. A multiple guest on early seasons of Thank God You’re Here, Wilson was also part of the ensemble cast of sketch show The Wedge, a short-lived series that enjoyed a cult following.
In 2016 she joined the ensemble for Australia’s version of Whose Line is it Anyway?, a role described by her agency as her “dream job”.
Wilson also hosted two radio shows on Nova, the first in 2007 and the second in 2009.
Most recently, she was seen as the host of Foxtel’s Great Australian Bake Off.
JOCK ZONFRILLO
The affable Scotsman, who died in April at the age of 46, became a popular figure on Australian TV thanks to his role as a judge on MasterChef, which he began in 2019 after he, Melissa Leong and Andy Allen replaced the show’s original hosts Matt Preston, George Calombaris and Gary Mehigan.
Born Barry Zonfrillo in Glasgow, Zonfrillo began working in kitchens as a dishwasher at the age of 13. He left school at 15 and started an apprenticeship at the Turnberry hotel, becoming one of its youngest-ever apprentices.
Zonfrillo began working for celebrated British chef Marco Pierre White at 17, writing in his 2021 memoir Last Shot that he was homeless and addicted to heroin at the time. He was appointed head chef at Cornwall’s Tresanton hotel when he was just 22.
Zonfrillo became head chef at Sydney’s Forty One in 2000, but was fired in 2002 after he set fire to an apprentice’s pants for working too slowly. Zonfrillo said it was a “practical joke gone wrong”.
He opened various restaurants in Australia and, in 2021, released his frank and controversial memoir Last Shot.
Some of the stories in the book were disputed, with famed chef White saying that “almost everything he has written about me is untrue” in the chapters about Zonfrillo’s time in London in the 1990s.
“There’s no question that some of my book makes me look pretty unsavoury at the best of times,” Zonfrrillo said. “I carry the shame from those years, not pride, and it was a big obstacle for me to overcome when writing this book.”
JOHNNY RUFFO
The acclaimed singer and actor first came to our notice after appearing on the 2011 final of X Factor Australia where he placed third.
The following year Ruffo signed a music contract with Sony and recorded a duet with his former X Factor mentor Guy Sebastian. He also competed on Dancing With The Stars.
In 2013, Ruffo began a three-year stint on evergreen soap Home & Away, where he starred as loveable clown, Chris Harrington.
In August 2017, Ruffo announced that he had been diagnosed with brain cancer and began “aggressive treatment”. Three years later he announced that the cancer had returned. Ruffo died in November at the age of 35.
Among those mourning his death was Spice Girls star Melanie Brown.
“My heart just broke,” she wrote on Instagram. “Sending my sincere condolences.”
ALAN WILKIE
Forever known as Australia’s “first weatherman”, Alan Wilkie died in July at the age of 94. The esteemed meteorologist began his on screen career presenting the weather on the ABC in the 1950s after his employer the Bureau of Meteorology, insisted.
“It was in the very first week of television and I nearly died. I was so frightened. I don’t remember a single thing I said, but it must have been all right,” he later said.
The Queensland-born Wilkie, who served in World War II, left TV for a period after ending his stint at the network in 1960, reappearing on Australians’ television screens in 1968 when he joined Channel 7 but he would become best known for his 25-year stint as the Sydney-based forecaster for Channel 9.
In 1977, at the time Channel 9 poached him, Wilkie said he was amazed that people still recognised him.
“They seem to know all about me, they even recognise my voice,” he said.
“I don’t take myself seriously as a television personality but I do take the weather seriously.”
LISA MARIE PRESLEY
Blessed – or cursed – with music’s most iconic name, Lisa Marie Presley lived a tumultuous life, never far from the spotlight.
The only child of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie found fame difficult and became a tabloid staple, particularly due to her four marriages, which reached its apex with her bizarre union to Michael Jackson in 1994. They divorced barely two years later. (Her other marriages were to musician Danny Keough, actor Nicolas Cage and musician Michael Lockwood.)
She had four children, actress Riley Keough, Benjamin Keough, and twin daughters, Finley and Harper Lockwood.
She was an accomplished singer and released three albums, frequently touring, including trips to Australia.
But she struggled with addiction throughout her life and had been financially reckless at times.
She was devastated when her son Benjamin Keough died by suicide in 2020 at just 27, and in her final Instagram post before her death, Lisa Marie spoke about grief.
“I’ve dealt with death, grief and loss since the age of nine years old,” she wrote in an essay for People, referring to her age when her father died.
“I’ve had more than anyone’s fair share of it in my lifetime and somehow, I’ve made it this far.”
She was just 54 when she died in January after suffering cardiac arrest at her California home, two days after attending the Golden Globe Awards with her mother, Priscilla, to celebrate Australian director Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis movie.
MICHAEL GAMBON
The British actor may have had a long and distinguished career on stage and screen, but he will forever be remembered as the beloved Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films.
Gambon took over the role of the wizened Hogwarts headmaster for 2004’s Prisoner of Azkaban after the death of Richard Harris, ultimately playing the part in six of the franchise’s eight movies.
In addition to a celebrated career in theatre and on television, Gambon had memorable roles in movies like 1992’s Toys, 1999’s Sleepy Hollow, 2001’s Gosford Park and 2010’s The King’s Speech, in which he played King George V.
He was also twice nominated for Emmy Awards, he won four BAFTA Awards and, in 1998, he received a knighthood from the late Queen. Gambon died in September following a bout of pneumonia. He was 82.
ANGUS CLOUD
The rising star was discovered by a casting agent while working in a restaurant in New York and cast in HBO’s controversial Euphoria as Fezco, the drug dealer with a heart of gold.
Zendaya may have been the star of the controversial drama but, on screen, Cloud was magnetic and his vulnerable and kind performance clearly marked him as a star of the future.
He nabbed roles in independent films, North Hollywood (2021) and The Line (2023).
Cloud also became a fashion favourite, with designers clamouring to work with him (he fronted a Polo by Ralph Lauren campaign) or to just sit front row at their fashion week shows (Thom Browne, Versace).
Cloud died in July, shortly after the death of his father, with the actor’s family saying in a statement he had “intensely struggled with this loss”.
Cloud, who had a history of substance abuse, was found dead at his family’s California home. The coroner later ruled that he had died from an accidental overdose from a mix of drugs including fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, and benzodiazepine.
Originally published as Celebrity deaths: Stars we lost in 2023
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