Notable deaths of 2024, so far

Jan. 4, age 100 | British actress, who became a film star in the late 1940s playing a flirty mermaid named Miranda, portrayed a singing suffragist in the Disney musical “Mary Poppins” and won a Tony Award in the musical “A Little Night Music,” where she introduced Stephen Sondheim’s standard “Send in the Clowns.” | Read more

Jan. 7, age 78 | Cultural critic, whose essays for the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books — by turns stylish, erudite, droll and self-effacing — established her as an indispensable guide to modern dance and literature. | Read more

Jan. 13, age 99 | Actress best remembered for playing Trixie Norton, the disapproving Brooklynite wife of a sewer worker, on the influential 1950s variety-show skit and sitcom “The Honeymooners.” (Pictured, right) | Read more

Jan. 13, age 79 | Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic for The Washington Post, who brought incisive and barbed wit to coverage of the small screen and chronicled the medium as an increasingly powerful cultural force, for better and worse. | Read more

Jan. 19, age 81 | Longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, who co-founded the first national organization for Black lesbians and gays and coordinated logistics for the first national LGBTQ+ march on Washington. (Pictured, left) | Read more

Jan. 19, age 75 | Her yearning vocals and street-smart vibe as lead singer of the Shangri-Las brought an edgier style to the girl-group era of the 1960s with such hits as “Leader of the Pack,” and she then mostly left music for decades until returning with a solo album in her 50s. (Pictured, center) | Read more

Jan. 22, age 62 | Younger son of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, who worked to preserve his father’s legacy. | Read more

Jan. 23, age 91 | Newsman who spent 22 years anchoring the CBS-TV staple “Sunday Morning” and decades as a radio commentator, and who carved a distinct place for himself in broadcasting by occasionally presenting the news in wry doggerel. | Read more

Jan. 24, age 89 | Author, literature professor and member of the Kiowa Indian tribe, who became the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize — for his 1968 debut novel, “House Made of Dawn” — and helped inspire a flowering of contemporary Native American literature. | Read more

Jan. 30, age 91 | Vivacious Broadway musical star, who originated roles in “West Side Story,” “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Chicago” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” won two competitive Tony Awards and became one of the most honored Latina entertainers of her generation. (Pictured, left) | Read more

Jan. 30, age 90 | Former U.S. senator, who became the first female senator to represent Missouri after she was appointed to replace her husband following his death in a plane crash. | Read more

Jan. 30, age 67 | Dancer, singer, actor and choreographer, who urged audiences to “Ease on Down the Road” as the Scarecrow in Broadway’s “The Wiz” and who later won three Tony Awards while performing acrobatic leaps, percussive taps and 190-degree kicks across the stage and screen. (Pictured, right) | Read more

Feb. 1, age 76 | Former NFL linebacker turned muscle-flexing actor in action fare, memorably as nemesis-turned-ally Apollo Creed in the “Rocky” franchise. (Pictured, right) | Read more

Feb. 2, age 75 | American soprano, who had recently established herself as an opera singer in real life when she was cast by a French director to play one on-screen in the 1981 movie “Diva,” a cult film that lodged her in the memory of generations of art house audiences. | Read more

Feb. 4, age 45 | Disability rights activist, who was paralyzed from the neck down in an accident at age 11, graduated from Harvard University and became a professor and advocate for people with disabilities. | Read more

Feb. 5, age 62 | Toby Keith, a former rodeo hand, oil rigger and semipro football player who became a rowdy king of country music, singing patriotic anthems, wry drinking songs and propulsive odes to cowboy culture that collectively sold more than 40 million records. | Read more | See more photos

Feb. 6, age 88 | Shaggy-haired, high-voltage Japanese maestro, who served as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for almost 30 years and was among the first Asian conductors to win world renown leading a classical orchestra. | Read more

Feb. 10, age 96 | He helped create the on-the-go breakfast as an inventor of Pop-Tarts, leading the Michigan baking team that developed an unpretentious, toaster-friendly pastry with a fruity filling and ineffable space-age sweetness. | Read more

Feb. 16, age 47 | Steely Russian lawyer, who exposed corruption, self-dealing and abuse of power by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies, sustaining a popular challenge to Putin for more than a decade despite constant pressure from the authorities and a near-fatal poisoning. | Read more | See more photos

Feb. 17, age 92 | Head coach, who, in 17 seasons, built the University of Maryland into a college basketball power with ACC and NIT titles. | Read more

Feb. 18, age 83 | Doe-eyed bon vivant, who first dazzled paparazzi as a teen bride of a playboy prince and who became an epitome of jet-set glamour and intrigue as a model in Paris, a movie temptress and a globe-trotting socialite who mingled with royalty, rogues and celebrities. | Read more

Feb. 20, age 39 | She was born with HIV and spent nearly her entire life — ever since she was a young girl — as an advocate for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention. | Read more

Feb. 21, age 100 | Nobel Prize-winning physician, whose work on hormones produced by the brain helped lead to the development of the birth control pill and treatments for prostate and other cancers, and who engaged for decades in a famously scathing but productive scientific rivalry. | Read more

Feb. 22, age 85 | The “first lady of the banjo,” who picked her way into bluegrass and country music history as a member of the Stoneman Family band and found wider fame as an irascible performer on “Hee Haw,” the down-home variety show. | Read more

Feb. 23, age 98 | Italian fencer whose elegant wielding of the foil earned her a gold medal at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki and an enduring reputation as a grande dame of her sport. | Read more

Feb. 27, age 76 | Black-clad stand-up comic, who mined guilt, anxiety and neurosis for laughs — naming some of his cable specials “I’m in Pain,” “I’m Exhausted” and “I’m Doomed” — and played a semi-fictionalized version of himself on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” | Read more

March 1, age 102 | New York textile designer, socialite and self-described “geriatric starlet,” who became an unlikely fashion celebrity in her 80s for her outré style. | Read more | See more photos

March 3, age 101 | Creator of ’50s “poodle skirt’” fad, a simple idea for the Christmas party outfit that turned into one of the defining looks of an era. | Read more

March 8, age 89 | Former Air Force flier, who in the 1960s became the first Black pilot for a major U.S. passenger airline after battles by others to enter the industry, including a landmark anti-discrimination claim backed by the Supreme Court. | Read more

March 11, age 81 | Dorie Ladner, who joined the civil rights movement as a teenager in Mississippi, braving gunfire, tear gas, police dogs and Ku Klux Klansmen in an undaunted campaign for racial equality. | Read more

March 11, age 78 | He was stricken with polio at age 6, earned a law degree and wrote a 2020 memoir about his life using the iron lung chamber to help him breathe. | Read more

March 11, age 77 | Political strategist, who helped move gay rights to the center of American politics and put his long friendship with Bill Clinton on the line over the president’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring gay people from serving openly in the military. | Read more

March 15, age 98 | Holocaust refugee, who joined resistance, fled her native Austria and made her way to Italy, where as a teen she helped secure supplies for an operation that produced false documents for Jewish refugees. | Read more

March 18, age 82 | English heiress, and debutante at a 1958 Buckingham Palace ball, who in 1974 was masterminding plots for the Irish Republican Army. | Read more

March 20, age 95 | Tailor to presidents and stars, who, unbeknownst to many of his celebrity clients, learned his craft at Auschwitz and who came to America as his family’s sole survivor of the Holocaust. |Read more

March 23, age 94 | Baltimore lawyer, who won hundreds of millions of dollars for workers injured by exposure to asbestos, then became wider known to the public as the combative chief owner of the Baltimore Orioles for three decades. | Read more

March 27, age 82 | A doggedly independent four-term U.S. senator from Connecticut who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, becoming the first Jewish candidate on the national ticket of a major party. (Pictured, right) | Read more | See more photos

March 29, age 87 | Actor, who brought authority to hundreds of screen roles, winning an Oscar as a Marine drill instructor in “An Officer and a Gentleman” and an Emmy Award as a wise, older guide to the enslaved Kunta Kinte in the groundbreaking miniseries “Roots.” (Pictured, left) | Read more | See more photos

April 1, age 102 | Navy lieutenant commander and the last living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship, which exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. | Read more

April 10, age 76 | Football superstar, who became a symbol of domestic violence and racial division after he was found not guilty of murdering his ex-wife and her friend in a trial that riveted the nation and had legal and cultural repercussions for years afterward. | Read more | See more photos

April 11, age 85 | Former physical therapist who was inspired to redirect her training toward childbirth, helping spark the doula movement that offers assistance during delivery and afterward with postpartum care. | Read more

April 13, age 93 | Artist, author and activist who charted a defiantly independent course through the American art world, protesting the exclusion of Black and female artists from major museums and crafting vibrant paintings, quilts and children’s books that explored African American life and history. | Read more

April 20, age 76 | Former Associated Press journalist who was held hostage by Hezbollah for nearly seven years. (Pictured, center) | Read more

April 23, age 91 | Chip innovator, who helped build the digital age and who, in 1966, came up with an idea for computer memory that would open up a future of smartphones and laptops. | Read more

May 4, age 87 | Artist who achieved early fame with monochromatic paintings that helped establish minimalism as an alternative to abstract expressionism in the late 1950s, then spent the next 50 years creating colorful works that seemed to repudiate his youthful principles. | Read more

May 5, age 83 | Grande dame of Hollywood stuntwomen who brawled, crashed, plummeted and was set ablaze during a career covering more than 150 films and television series, including leaping off buildings as “Wonder Woman” and being swept away in a mudslide in the adventure film “Romancing the Stone.” | Read more

May 12, age 78 | Musical chameleon whose wailing alto saxophone helped shape the sound of jazz fusion in the 1970s and ’80s, as he sold millions of albums while adding his touch to the performances of dozens of musical stars from Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins to the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Linda Ronstadt. | Read more

May 13, age 92 | A towering woman of letters for the past half-century whose works of short fiction illuminated the emotional terrain of seemingly ordinary lives, and who was honored at the end of her career with the Nobel Prize in literature. | Read more

May 13, age 76 | Medic in a Vietnam battle who was awarded the Medal of Honor for treating and rescuing soldiers, with limited medical supplies, under intense fire when he was a 20-year-old private first class. | Read more

May 13, age 86 | Photographer who captured Native American life with warmth and sensitivity, earning the trust of Hopi and Navajo leaders before taking pictures that documented spiritual ceremonies and traditional practices seldom seen by outsiders. | Read more

May 16, age 92 | Texas-born character actor who created an acclaimed gallery of comically macho throwbacks in films such as “9 to 5” and “Tootsie” and TV shows such as “The Slap Maxwell Story” and “Buffalo Bill.” | Read more

May 17, age 88 | Longest-serving flight attendant, who began flying in 1957 with the now-defunct Eastern Air Lines and eventually became the world’s oldest active flight attendant. | Read more

May 20, age 87 | Onetime Wall Street titan who personified the excesses of the 1980s — helping inspire Hollywood’s fictional mogul Gordon Gekko and his greed-is-good mantra — but who came to a crashing end with insider-trading revelations that sent him to prison as part of one of the most sweeping securities scandals in history. (Pictured, center) | Read more

May 23, age 53 | Documentary filmmaker whose Oscar-nominated “Super Size Me” chronicled a month of watching his body swell and health decline while eating only McDonald’s meals, launching a highflying career that later imploded after he acknowledged past incidents of sexual assault and harassment. | Read more

June 3, age 57 | Foundational member of the rap group 2 Live Crew, the raunchy Miami-based outfit whose sexually explicit lyrics delighted fans and dismayed local prosecutors, sparking a national debate over freedom of expression. (Pictured, right) | Read more

June 9, age 95 | United Methodist minister who became a principal tactician of nonviolent protest during the civil rights movement, leading sit-ins, marches and Freedom Rides that withstood attacks by mobs and police throughout the 1960s. | Read more

June 10, age 87 | As a child, he learned to swim in a creek near Cincinnati after being blocked from the local Whites-only public pool, and he later passed a grueling Navy training regime to become the first Black member of the modern-era SEALs in the early 1960s. | Read more

June 12, age 86 | Basketball legend, who made the Los Angeles Lakers a dominant force in pro basketball for three decades, first as a high-scoring guard whose graceful dribbling silhouette inspired the NBA logo, then as the team’s astute general manager. | Read more | See more photos

June 18, age 93 | The “Say Hey Kid” and perennial all-star center fielder for the New York and San Francisco Giants in the 1950s and ’60s whose powerful bat, superb athletic grace and crafty baseball acumen earned him a place with Babe Ruth atop the game’s roster of historic greats. | Read more and see more photos

June 20, age 88 | Actor of breathtaking range who became one of the most compelling players in cinema, whether portraying a misfit combat surgeon, an inscrutable cop, a grieving father or a futuristic tyrant. | Read more and see more photos

June 21, age 104 | One of the few surviving members of the only predominantly Black unit of the Women’s Army Corps to serve overseas during World War II, a long unheralded group that lifted the spirits of American soldiers — and proved its own skill — by diligently delivering mountains of mail from home. | Read more

July 12, age 96 | Child survivor of the Holocaust who became known to millions as Dr. Ruth, the perky sex therapist whose frankness on her long-running radio and television call-in shows made her a go-to guide for tips on the art and science of lovemaking. | Read more

July 13, age 76 | Frizzy-haired fitness guru who championed positivity, exercise and healthy eating, and helped people lose millions of pounds through an idiosyncratic blend of earnestness and camp. | Read more

July 13, age 53 | Raven-haired actress best known for portraying an impulsive teenager on the TV drama “Beverly Hills, 90210” and a flirty witch in the popular fantasy series “Charmed.” | Read more

July 18, age 94 | Star of two long-running TV sitcoms — “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Newhart” — who had a staid “button-down” style that was marked by his uninflected delivery, carefully placed pauses and stutters. | Read more | See more photos

Aug. 18, age 88 | French actor who achieved international stardom in roles that pitted his luminous beauty against his characters’ dark souls. | Read more

Aug. 18, age 88 | Host for nearly 30 years of a daytime television talk show that explored the serious and the salacious, popularizing a breezy format — with audience members asking questions and offering opinions — that opened the door to successors and rivals including Oprah Winfrey. | Read more

Notable deaths of 2023

Photo editing by Stephen Cook, Jennifer Beeson Gregory and Dee Swann. Copy editing by Shibani Shah.