Paul Krassner

At the age of six, violin prodigy Paul Krassner became the youngest ever person to play Carnegie Hall. However, he drifted away from music during his higher education years and instead became raptured with the comedy of Lenny Bruce. Krassner was briefly a stand-up himself (under the name Paul Maul), but had much more impact […]

Rutger Hauer

Voted the greatest Dutch actor of all-time in a 1999 poll, Rutger Hauer was a cult star across the globe. He originally had his sights set on a career as a military medic, but left the armed forces over his refusal to handle deadly weapons. Instead he became an actor: first on Dutch television, and […]

Jeremy Kemp

Jeremy Kemp was part of the original Z-Cars cast, the ground-breaking TV cop show that changed the way episodic drama was tackled in the UK. However, he left the show during its second season – allegedly because he found wearing the police uniform too uncomfortable. He went on to become a prolific character actor both sides […]

David Hedison

Born Albert Hedison, our hero was made to change his name while doing the publicity rounds for his breakthrough TV show, 1959’s Five Fingers. Choosing “David”, which was his middle name, Hedison went on to have a near-60-year career on the big and small screen, with supporting roles in both The Fly and The Greatest Story Ever Told. […]

Johnny Clegg

Goddamn it’s too fucking hot to be updating a deadpool website, but these are the travails I put up with while maintaining the world’s greatest celebrity death prediction competition… Johnny Clegg, aka the “White Zulu”, was one of South Africa’s favourite sons. Born in the Lancashire town of Bacup, he moved to Johannesburg at the […]

John Paul Stevens

While 2019 DDPers have been more concerned with the health of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of her old co-workers has slipped out the back door. John Paul Stevens served as a Supreme Court justice between 1975 and 2010, the third-longest tenure on record. Appointed to the court by Gerald Ford (who called the move one […]

Vincent Lambert

Dunno what the deal is with the French and comas. The current longest-comatose person, and the most comatose man in history, is a Frenchman: former France international footballer Jean Pierre Adams, who fell into a coma back in 1982. Anyway, Vincent Lambert didn’t get the chance to break that record, lasting only 11 years in […]

Valentina Cortese

Less than a month after her old mucker Franco Zeffirelli passed on, Valentina Cortese has swapped day for night. Cortese had a varied career, and was perhaps the only actress who was both a former contract system player (she signed with 20th Century Fox in 1948), and a favourite of the European arthouse directors of […]

Denise Nickerson

Denise Nickerson made her TV debut at the age of 2, appearing in a commercial for a local heating firm. She didn’t stop acting for the next 20 years, becoming a go-to child actor for daytime TV soaps and appearing on The Phil Silvers Show (as Bill Bixby’s daughter, for some reason). In 1971 she was […]

Rip Torn

God knows how, but Rip Torn somehow made it to the age of 88. They say he could have been the next Marlon Brando or James Dean, had he not had a very slight falling out with Dennis Hopper on the set of Easy Rider. Torn was kicked off the movie (replaced by Jack Nicholson) and […]