This English rose commanded an audience from the moment she stepped in front of the camera at the age of 14. She matched some of Hollywood's greatest leading men when she starred opposite Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls, Laurence Olivier in the 1948 version of Hamlet, and Kirk Douglas in Spartacus. In 1949, at age 20, Simmons earned the first of her two Oscar nominations for Hamlet. Later, she would claim her place in television history by playing the quiet, yet hardened, matriarch in the miniseries The Thorn Birds, which would earn Simmons an Emmy in 1983. According to the Los Angeles Times, Simmons phoned Audrey Hepburn shortly after seeing Roman Holiday, a film that was originally offered to Simmons, and said: "I wanted to hate you, but I have to tell you I wouldn't have been half as good."
AP Photo
In Steven Spielberg's 1982 film Poltergeist audiences were mesmerized by the likes of Zelda Rubinstein, the 4-foot-3-inch actress whose clairvoyant character, Tangina, cleared a seemingly ordinary suburban house of its evil spirits—and delivered one of the most memorable lines in movie history: "This house is clean!" Following Poltergeist, Rubinstein appeared in the film's two sequels, as well as her memorable roles in the John Hughes teen flick Sixteen Candles, where she played a squeaky-heeled wedding organist, and her recurring role on CBS' Picket Fences, as Sheriff dispatcher Ginny Wheedon. Rubinstein was also one of the first celebrities to speak out on HIV/AIDS, appearing in a series of advertisements, which ran throughout the late '80s. Rubinstein will always be remembered as a little woman with a big heart.
Courtesy of Everett Collection
J.D. Salinger defined the voice of a generation when he gave us Holden Caulfield in the 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye. Born in New York, Salinger, like Caulfield, grew up in a life of privilege. After spending time in Europe and working for his father's food import company slaughtering pigs, Salinger took to writing. In 1948, when The New Yorker published Salinger's short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish, America took notice. The Catcher in the Rye, his only novel, came next, followed by a book of short fiction called Nine Stories, published in 1953. Salinger was a famous recluse, and published only two more books of stories, Franny and Zooey in 1961, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, both based on members of the Glass family.
Antony Di Gesu/San Diego Historical Society / Hulton Archive Collection / Getty Images
Gary Coleman played the lovable, cherubic-cheeked Arnold Jackson in the 1980s television series Diff'rent Strokes. Each week, from 1978 until 1986, Coleman moved the television world to the beat of joy and laughter. But Coleman, who was 18, still playing a 12-year-old child by the time the show had ended, seemed to want more for his life. Years later, the creators of the Broadway musical Avenue Q would parody him in the character Coleman, who sings, "It Sucks to Be Me." Coleman ran for California governor in 2003, and told The New York Times: "I want to escape that legacy of Arnold Jackson. I'm someone more. It would be nice if the world thought of me as something more."
Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
She began her professional acting career on the stage, appearing in musicals and dramatic productions, such as Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. But it was Dixie Carter's return to acting, following an eight-year hiatus in the late 1960s, when her television star began to rise. After making the move from New York to Los Angeles to pursue a prime-time television career, Carter soon appeared in various series as On Our Own, and Diff'rent Strokes, where she played the young Gary Coleman's stepmother. In 1984, Carter married actor Hal Holbrook, and two years later she won the role of Julia Sugarbaker in the sitcom Designing Women. As Sugarbaker, she portrayed a tough, headstrong feminist who ran a design firm from her house in Atlanta with co-stars Delta Burke, Jean Smart and Annie Potts. After the show's seven-year run, Carter continued to work in film, television, and in stage productions alongside Holbrook. Her most recent known role was as Marcia Cross' evil mother-in-law in ABC's Desperate Housewives, for which Carter was nominated for her first Emmy.
Everett Collection
In his 56-year career, Dennis Hopper starred in more than 150 feature and documentary films, television movies and series, and was twice nominated for an Academy Award. Dennis Hopper earned his first recognition as an actor working opposite friend and mentor James Dean in the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause, followed by another Dean film in which he played the role of Rock Hudson's son in Giant. For the remainder of his career, Hopper would star and guest star in various films and television series including Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman, the Twilight Zone series, Bonanza and Gunsmoke, and later, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, and Hoosiers, for which he earned an Oscar nomination. In 1969, Hopper co-wrote, directed and starred in Easy Rider, which came to stand for free living. Hopper was also a talented photographer and painter, and last spring, Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art staged a major retrospective of his work.
Julie Markes / AP Photo
Though his career was cut suddenly short, Hickenlooper directed a few films that stood out in the entertainment world, including Factory Girl, the story about actress and socialite Edie Sedgwick's romances with Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan, as well as the more recent Casino Jack, which was released in December 2010, and earned Kevin Spacey a Golden Globe nomination. One of Hickenlooper's first films, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, a documentary based on Francis Ford Coppola's trials and tribulations during the filming of Apocalypse Now, garnered him rave reviews in the early 1990s, and earned him an Emmy as co-director. Hickenlooper also gave us Mayor of the Sunset Strip.
Dan Steinberg / AP Photo
Though not in the Hollywood scene for long, British-bred Simon Monjack, wrote, produced, and directed a British indie flick called Two Days, Nine Lives, in 2001. Monjack also served as executive producer and storywriter of the Edie Sedgwick biopic, Factory Girl, starring Sienna Miller and Guy Pearce. In May 2010, a 40-year-old Monjack, who was the widower of actress Brittany Murphy, collapsed in the couple's bedroom.
As June Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver, Barbara Billingsley played the role of a 1950s mother to perfection. For six years, she graced our television screens as the traditional image of feminine flawlessness. Though she made her mark in our hearts on television, Billingsley began her career on Broadway in the short-lived play Straw Hat, and worked as a fashion model before signing her MGM deal. She co-starred in various films such as The Bad and the Beautiful, with Kirk Douglas, and played opposite Jane Wyman in Three Guys Named Mike. In 1980, Billingsley made a new generation of fans laugh when she played Jive Lady, the jive-talking passenger in the hit parody Airplane!, which co-starred Leslie Nielsen and Peter Graves.
Doug C. Pizac / AP Photo
Early in his career, Peter Graves played an undercover Nazi spy in the Billy Wilder film Stalag 17. From then on out, audiences would come to love Graves' characters and admire his talent of adapting so seamlessly to the parts he played. Graves appeared in more than 70 films, shows and TV movies throughout his more than 60 years as an actor, including one of his most memorable roles as Jim Phelps in the series Mission: Impossible, which ran from 1968 until 1973. As Phelps, the stern leader of the Impossible Missions Force, Graves received multiple award nominations, one Golden Globe, and an Emmy. Throughout most of his early years as an actor, Graves portrayed serious characters, full of venom and vigor, but in 1980 all that would be replaced by his turning role in the parody Airplane! Graves would once again wow audiences as the blundering and often awkward Capt. Clarence Oveur, whose dialogue included one-liners like, "Billy, have you ever been in a... in a Turkish prison?"
AP Photo
During the first half of Leslie Nielsen's acting career, he seemed to choose the more serious roles to comedic ones. In the 1957 romance film Tammy and the Bachelor, he starred opposite Debbie Reynolds, and in 1972 Nielsen joined an all-star cast in the action-adventure film The Poseidon Adventure. Then in 1980, Nielsen made an important and successful turn toward comedies, when he co-starred in Airplane! In this disaster parody, Nielsen played the passenger Dr. Rumack, who would help save the day when the plane's only co-pilots, played by Peter Graves and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, fall deathly ill from food poisoning. Nielsen's amazing comedic timing and deadpan delivery catapulted him into a series of parodied roles, such as his character Lt. Frank Drebin in the 1980s Police Squad! television show, and the Naked Gun film series, modeled after various police dramas.
Michael Caulfield / AP Photo
Over four decades, John Forsythe starred in three television series—two of which were major hits. From 1957 through 1962, Forsythe played playboy Bentley Gregg in the sitcom Bachelor Father. In the 1970s, Forsythe was the handsome soothing voice behind the well-known little speakerbox that sat on Bosley's desk in Charlie's Angels. Forsythe played the title character of Charlie Townsend, the millionaire private-eye boss to a bevy of beautiful female detectives. And in 1981, after the cancellation of Charlie's Angels, Forsythe played the wealthy, powerful, and debonair patriarch Blake Carrington in the 1980s nighttime soap opera Dynasty. For nine years as Blake Carrington, Forsythe would rule nighttime television, become a sex symbol in his sixties, and win the hearts of millions of fans across the world.
Wally Fong / AP Photo
The youngest daughter to royal British theater actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, Lynn Redgrave fittingly earned her first role on stage in Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream, at the Royal Court Theater in 1962. For the next three years, she followed in her famous parent's footsteps, starring in various theatrical productions of Shakespeare plays and working with well-known stars such as Laurence Olivier. Then in 1966, she earned the title role of Georgy, acting alongside her mother in Georgy Girl, for which she was nominated both for an Oscar and Golden Globe. Redgrave soon appeared on television, and starred in the critically acclaimed films Shine, with Geoffrey Rush, and Gods and Monsters, opposite Ian McKellen and Brendan Frasier, which earned Redgrave her second Oscar nomination. As a stage actress, Redgrave was a three-time Tony nominee, and in recent years, she appeared on various television shows and films as Ugly Betty, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Desperate Housewives, and Confessions of a Shopaholic.
Dave Pickoff / AP Photo
This Tony-winning actor became best known as the All-American father figure in the 1970s series Happy Days. Tom Bosley played Howard Cunningham from 1974 until 1984, the grumpy but kind-hearted patriarch in the ABC sitcom about a 1950s family living in Milwaukee. The show also starred Marion Ross as Bosley's wife, and their teenaged kids, played by Erin Moran and Ron Howard, and the slick greaser Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli, played by Henry Winkler, who was always around to lend the family a hand. Bosley found continued success in television, recurring as Sheriff Amos Tupper in Angela Lansbury's crime drama Murder, She Wrote, and playing the title character of Father Frank Dowling in the mystery series Father Dowling Mysteries, from 1987 to 1991. During Bosley's years as an actor, he appeared in numerous plays, films and television shows, including ER and That '70s Show, as well as giving birth to the theatrical version of Belle's father Maurice in the Broadway show Beauty and the Beast. His last and most recent role was in the Jennifer Lopez film The Back-Up Plan, in 2010.
Bob Galbraith / AP Photo
Known to fans of the 1980s as one half of the "Two Coreys" equation, the Toronto-born Corey Haim rose to movie-star fame playing endearing teenagers that everyone rooted for. From the very beginning of his career, Haim worked opposite talented actors, such as Robert Downey, Jr. and Sarah Jessica Parker in the thriller Firstborn, and Sally Field in both Secret Admirer and Murphy's Romance. But in the 1986 movie Lucas, Haim became a star in his own right. As the film's title character, he starred opposite Charlie Sheen and newcomer Winona Ryder. In the late '80s Haim worked on a series of teen movies with Corey Feldman, beginning with the vampire cult classic The Lost Boys in 1987. The two young stars appeared in more than 10 films and television shows together, including License to Drive, Dream a Little Dream, and in David Spade's 2003 comedy, Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, as well as starring in their own reality series fittingly called The Two Coreys.
During his seven decades as a producer, Dino De Laurentiis oversaw nearly 150 films, including Conan the Barbarian, Serpico, King Kong, and the David Lynch directed sci-fi Dune. Aside from his Hollywood life, however, De Laurentiis would remain Italy's saving grace, as he helped to build the film industry in his native country following World War II. De Laurentiis produced two of Federico Fellini's films, La Strada, for which he won an Oscar, and Nights of Cabiria, along with longtime co-producer and collaborator Carlos Ponti. And for a time in the 1970s, De Laurentiis' Italian film studio housed a number of American films, including the Jane Fonda film Barbarella. He also produced multiple adaptations of Stephen King's novels, such as the 1985 film Silver Bullet, and three of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter stories.
AP Photo
Patricia Neal began her acting career on Broadway, starring in the production of Another Part of the Forest in 1946, for which she won a Tony Award. Soon after, she moved to Hollywood to pursue a career in film, which led her to starring roles in the 1949 adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, the science-fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still, and as John Wayne's love interest in Operation Pacific. In 1953, she married British writer Roald Dahl, author of James and the Giant Peach, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Although far from the hubbub of Hollywood, Neal continued to appear in big films such as Hud, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar in 1963, starring opposite Paul Newman, and as the wealthy, married woman who financed George Peppard's character in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
ABC via Getty Images
Blake Edwards, whose grandfather, J. Gordon Edwards, was a silent-movie director, began his career as an actor in the 1940s, and soon after assumed the role of directing rather than taking direction. One of his first great successes was the television series Peter Gunn, for which he earned two Emmy nominations, and in 1963, Edwards found his stride in movies with the Pink Panther series, which he wrote and directed. Beginning with the 1963 film, The Pink Panther, starring Peter Sellers as the bumbling Inspector Jacques Clouseau to the more recent versions with Steve Martin as the zany inspector, Edwards knew how to give audiences a laugh. His first big-budget movie, which also became a huge box-office success for Universal, was a comedy starring Tony Curtis and Cary Grant called, Operation Petticoat. And in 1969, Edwards married Julie Andrews, who would later star in Edwards' film Victor, Victoria, for which she won a Golden Globe. And perhaps one of Edwards' most beloved films, the romantic-drama Breakfast at Tiffany's, proved to audiences and the entertainment world alike that Edwards was more than just a funnyman's director. He was a star among stars.
Reed Saxon / AP Photo
This handsome movie star of the 1950s and 1960s was a leading man if ever we've seen one. In Tony Curtis' six decades as an actor, he appeared in more than 60 films, and rose to fame in the title role in Houdini, opposite his then-wife, Janet Leigh. During his marriage to Leigh, the couple had two daughters, Kelly and Jamie Lee Curtis. His recognition as a strong leading man continued when he co-starred with Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell of Success. A year later, Curtis was nominated for his only Oscar, for The Defiant Ones, in 1958. But one of his most unforgettable roles remains his cross-dressing stint alongside Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe in Billy Wilder's comedy Some Like It Hot. But while audiences loved his funny side, Curtis had a dark side as well, which he showcased in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus and the 1968 film The Boston Strangler, which earned Curtis a Golden Globe nomination.
Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
She was known and loved by many as Blanche Devereaux, the cheeky, man-loving Southern belle in The Golden Girls, for which she won an Emmy and was nominated for three Golden Globes. From 1985 until 1992, McClanahan co-starred alongside Betty White, Bea Arthur, and Estelle Getty as one-fourth of the comedy quartet of bright, sharp-tongued divorced and widowed women over 50 who shared a house in Miami, and helped each other through all sorts of life's ordeals. McClanahan also voiced a character in King of the Hill, appeared in the 1997 movie Starship Troopers, and had the recurring role as Aunt Fran Crowley in Mama's Family. And in 2005, she filled the role of Madame Morrible in the Broadway musical Wicked.
Everett Collection
Known most notably as Detective Arthur Dietrich in the long-lived comedy series Barney Miller, Steve Landesberg's ability to deliver comedic lines in a deadpan approach made his talents difficult to touch. During his nearly 40 years in the entertainment industry, he appeared in numerous television shows and films, including The Golden Girls, Cosby, That '70s Show, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It's no wonder Landesberg did so well in comedies, since he got his start as a performer doing stand-up in New York. And after getting his first television appearance on The Tonight Show in the early 1970s, Landesberg, it seems, had the itch to continue in front of the camera, and we're sure glad he did.
Getty Images
Veteran television actor Robert Culp earned his Golden Globe nomination and three Emmy nods for his role as Kelly Robinson in the adventure-comedy series I Spy. The show, which co-starred Bill Cosby, ran from 1965 to 1968, airing during the height of spy-show popularity, and centered around two American espionage agents. When Cosby learned of the actor's death, he told The Los Angeles Times that Culp was "the big brother that all of us wish for." Following his run in the I Spy series, Culp co-starred opposite Natalie Wood, Elliot Gould, and Dyan Cannon in the provocative, swinger film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice in 1969. Later, Culp would play another federal agent, Bill Maxwell, in the ABC series The Greatest American Hero. Of Culp's 60 years as an actor, he appeared in a variety of other well-known television shows and films, including Murder, She Wrote, The Golden Girls, The Pelican Brief, and Everybody Loves Raymond.
Ron Frehm / AP Photo
Stephen J. Cannell's career began in the '60s, after he sold his first television script, It Takes a Thief, to Universal. He soon became a contract writer for Universal Studios, working on shows like Columbo, Ironside, and the police series, Adam-12. Over his 50-year career, Cannell co-created nearly 40 television shows, including The Rockford Files with James Garner, The Greatest American Hero, The A-Team, 21 Jump Street, and The Commish. It seemed Cannell had a passion for detective stories, and in an interesting turn of career, he began writing mystery novels in the late '90s. During his time as an author, Cannell wrote and co-wrote more than 17 books, some as a collaboration with writer Janet Evanovich. His last novel, The Prostitute's Ball, released in October 2010, was the final book of his Shane Scully series.
Reed Saxon / AP Photo
Lena Horne began her singing career at The Cotton Club in Harlem when she was just 16, and worked the nightclub circuit for years before she broke into Hollywood. In the early 1940s, Horne became the first black entertainer to sign a long-term studio contract. She debuted in MGM's Panama Hattie, and a year later she performed "Stormy Weather" in the 1943 film of the same name. Horne appeared in a number of musicals during her contracted years, including Cabin in the Sky, in which she performed a scene singing "Ain't It the Truth" while soaking in a bubble bath that, due to its provocative nature, would only become recognizable years later in That's Entertainment! III. Known for her sultry jazz voice, Horne also appeared in films such as Ziegfield Follies, and Jerome Kern's biopic Till the Clouds Roll By, where she could be seen performing a segment from Kern's Show Boat. In 1978, Horne appeared in her final film, The Wiz.
The epitome of an American heartthrob in the 1950s, Eddie Fisher climbed the ranks of swooning crooners after performing on a popular radio show. He wooed the ladies singing songs such as "Wish You Were Here," "Oh, My Pa-Pa," and "I Need You Now." Audiences may have also heard of him due to his personal life linked with Hollywood starlets. Fisher married Debbie Reynolds in 1955 and had two children. Fisher guest starred on various shows, such as Perry Como's show, before earning his own The Eddie Fisher Show, in 1957. Two years later, Fisher's marriage to Reynolds fell apart when he fell in love with her best friend, Elizabeth Taylor. Fisher divorced Reynolds to marry Taylor in 1959, and appeared alongside his then-wife in the 1960 movie, Butterfield 8. His marriage to Taylor lasted five years, and in 1967 Fisher married another singing beauty, Connie Stevens. From his marriage with Stevens came two more children, Joely Fisher, co-star of Ellen, and 'Till Death, and actress Tricia Leigh Fisher. Throughout his career, Fisher, who was signed to RCA Victor, recorded numerous songs, 19 of which became top 10 hits.
AP Photo
To many of this generation, Gloria Stuart was the elderly lady who reminisced of love and tragedy in the film Titanic. To those who are familiar with films of the 1930s, Stuart was much more. Her career spanned nearly 80 years; she was one of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild, and she appeared opposite some of Hollywood's leading men. She starred alongside Claude Rains in The Invisible Man early in her career, and later James Cagney, Lionel Barrymore, Boris Karloff, and Shirley Temple. For a time, Stuart also held a career as an artist, with some of her works appearing in the Metropolitan Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum. In 1997, James Cameron would give her the role that would earn Stuart her first nominations for an Oscar and Golden Globe in Titanic, as the 100-year-old Rose, who told the story of her younger days of falling in love on that fateful voyage across the Atlantic. Stuart ended up winning the SAG Award for her role, and in 2000, was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Everett Collection
Arthur Penn began his career climbing the proverbial ladder of Hollywood as a director of television shows in the early 1950s. But it wasn't until 1958 when he made his directorial debut in the Western film The Left Handed Gun, starring Paul Newman as Billy the Kid, that Penn would get his chance to shine. His next film, The Miracle Worker, earned Penn an Oscar nomination, as did both actresses for their portrayals of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller, respectively. Following the film's success, Penn would next direct leading man Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, which earned 10 Oscar nominations, giving Penn his second nomination. Throughout his career, Penn would direct some of the greatest actors of all time, including Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Dustin Hoffman, and Gene Hackman.
Markus Schreiber / AP Photo
She made the cuts to Quentin Tarantino's most memorable films, and earned Academy Award nominations for doing it. Film editor Sally Menke was credited on more than 20 films since 1984, and worked on every Tarantino project. Some of her first notable non-Tarantino editing jobs included work on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1990, and Mulholland Falls, starring Nick Nolte, Melanie Griffith, and Jennifer Connelly in 1996. But it was her precise cuts in Tarantino's films that made her a star editor. Beginning with Reservoir Dogs, in 1992, Menke collaborated with Tarantino on eight films, spanning almost two decades, including the Kill Bill, series and Jackie Brown. Her two Oscar nominations came from Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, and Inglourious Basterds. In September, Menke died while hiking in Los Angeles.
Michael Bezjian / WireImage
Irvin Kershner's Hollywood career began when he moved to downtown Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He first worked as a cinematographer and director of United States documentaries in Iran, Greece, and Turkey, which led his transition into documentary television. From there, he began directing television series such as The Rebel, and eventually landed the directorial role that would make him an international success, The Empire Strikes Back—the first in a series of sequels to the Star Wars franchise. Upon learning of Kershner's passing, George Lucas made this statement: "The world has lost a great director and one of the most genuine people I've had the pleasure of knowing. Irvin Kershner was a true gentleman in every sense of the word." Kershner went on to direct other films, including the James Bond film, Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery, and RoboCop 2.
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN / AFP / Getty Images
Known to the Hollywood community as the man who could make you look young again, Dr. Frank Ryan began his career in reconstructive surgery while working various fellowships, including one in which he helped burn victims. He moved to Los Angeles in 1986, and soon became the go-to plastic surgeon for the likes of Vince Neill, Gene Simmons, and Melissa Rivers. Dr. Ryan's most notable celebrity patient was Heidi Montag of The Hills—who made Ryan famous for doing 10 procedures on her in one day.
Chris Polk / AP Photo
Lisa Blount was first spotted by audiences in the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman, where she portrayed Lynette Pomeroy, the fun-loving, yet cynical best friend of Debra Winger, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination. Blount also appeared in a number of other films as the Jerry Lee Lewis biopic, Great Balls of Fire! starring Dennis Quaid and Winona Ryder, and television shows such as Murder, She Wrote, and Picket Fences. In 2001, Blount won her only Oscar as the producer of The Accountant, a live-action short film. She continued to appear in various television shows and independent films until 2007, and also had a successful career as a producer.
Frank Micelotta / ImageDirect
Jill Clayburgh first appeared on Broadway in the 1960s, and maintained a successful career in television and film until the day she passed away. Her characters were strong, daring, and unafraid to play the role of a feminist at a time when women's characters were bound to fragility. On Broadway, she played the widowed Catherine in Bob Fosse's Pippin, and earned her first Oscar nomination as Erica Benton, a woman who discovers a renewed sense of sexual freedom after her husband leaves her for a younger woman in the 1978 film An Unmarried Woman. The following year, Clayburgh earned another Oscar nod in the romantic comedy Starting Over with Burt Reynolds and Candice Bergen. She also appeared in movies such as Silver Streak, with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, and Bernardo Bertolucci's Luna. Most recently, Clayburgh co-starred as the matriarch of the Darling family in ABC's Dirty Sexy Money, and the critically acclaimed film Love and Other Drugs, with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal. Her last film, Bridesmaids, will be released in 2011.
Seth Wenig / AP Photo
She began working as a Hollywood publicist in her twenties, initially to promote her brother's film, Hell Up in Harlem. But in the 1980s, Chasen's career as publicist to the stars was truly born when she promoted such films as On Golden Pond, which earned three Oscars, including one each for Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, as well as the film that earned Michael Douglas his second Oscar, Wall Street, and the 1989 Oscar winner for Best Picture, Driving Miss Daisy. Soon after, Chasen became senior vice president of MGM's publicity department, and later started her own publicity firm, Chasen & Co., focusing much of her attention on movie composers including Oscar winners Hans Zimmer and Jan A. P. Kaczmarek. Other celebrities Chasen represented included the late Natalie Wood, Richard Zanuck, and Irwin Winkler. She worked relentlessly, doing PR for recent films such as the 2010 Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker, and this year's Alice in Wonderland and Burlesque. Chasen was gunned down in Beverly Hills in November.
