With the notable exception of the beloved Carrie Fisher, many of the iconic lead actors in the "Star Wars" saga are still with us. Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, and Natalie Portman are all going strong, and so are the stars of the space opera's most recent episodes. Some of the actors from the original film who were already veterans at the time, like Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing, died some years ago, but both enjoyed long lives beyond the average age.
Sadly, this cannot be said of numerous other actors involved in the big screen franchise and its recent TV spin-offs. Performers have died in their 70s, 60s, and 50s, many of them leaving us wishing we could have seen more years of great performances from them. Whether they had spotlight roles or were hidden behind alien masks, here are the "Star Wars" actors we lost too soon.
Sadly, this cannot be said of numerous other actors involved in the big screen franchise and its recent TV spin-offs. Performers have died in their 70s, 60s, and 50s, many of them leaving us wishing we could have seen more years of great performances from them. Whether they had spotlight roles or were hidden behind alien masks, here are the "Star Wars" actors we lost too soon.
- 9/2/2023
- by Jack Hawkins
- Slash Film
Doctor Strange and Sherlock Holmes actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, is to play the real-life cold war spy, Greville Wynne in FilmNation’s Ironbark.
On Chesil Beach’s Dominic Cooper is set to direct and executive produce alongside Cumberbatch. The pair are reuniting after working on the BBC drama series The Hollow Crown. The production is based on a script from The Hitman’s Bodyguard Tom O’Connor, who will also exec produce.
Also in the news – Classic BBC drama Tenko to premiere on True Entertainment channel this May
The tone of the film is said to be the same as tone to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Greville Wynne was an electrical engineer recruited to MI5 who became an intermediary for high-ranking Soviet spy Penkovsky who was engaged in selling arms and weapons secrets to British intelligence during the Cold War. The two men became pally but when their activities were revealed...
On Chesil Beach’s Dominic Cooper is set to direct and executive produce alongside Cumberbatch. The pair are reuniting after working on the BBC drama series The Hollow Crown. The production is based on a script from The Hitman’s Bodyguard Tom O’Connor, who will also exec produce.
Also in the news – Classic BBC drama Tenko to premiere on True Entertainment channel this May
The tone of the film is said to be the same as tone to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Greville Wynne was an electrical engineer recruited to MI5 who became an intermediary for high-ranking Soviet spy Penkovsky who was engaged in selling arms and weapons secrets to British intelligence during the Cold War. The two men became pally but when their activities were revealed...
- 5/8/2018
- by Zehra Phelan
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
One of the most ambitious television dramas of the 1980s has found a new home on True Entertainment. It should also find a new audience there, as it has done continuously since its final Reunion special aired in 1985, bringing the four year run to a close. It began as something of a revelation to many, choosing to tell the stories of a group of women during the Second World War. With so many movies and television production telling and re-telling the stories centering around men during the war Tenko’s initial success proved that there were many more stories to tell.
The series starred Stephanie Beachem, Stephanie Cole and Doctor Who’s Louise Jameson, along with Jean Anderson, Patricia Lawrence and well known comedy actor Burt Kwowk as Major Yamauchi. It dramatised the stories of women prisoners of the Japanese, taken after the Fall of Singapore in 1942, and how their...
The series starred Stephanie Beachem, Stephanie Cole and Doctor Who’s Louise Jameson, along with Jean Anderson, Patricia Lawrence and well known comedy actor Burt Kwowk as Major Yamauchi. It dramatised the stories of women prisoners of the Japanese, taken after the Fall of Singapore in 1942, and how their...
- 5/2/2018
- by Michael Walsh
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Tom Baker is to return as the Doctor for a set of BBC Radio 4 Extra audio dramas.
The six-part series, which was produced by Big Finish Productions and recorded in 2012, will be broadcast for the first time later this month.
Featuring a full voice cast, the first episode is titled 'Destination: Nerva', and sees the Doctor and Leela (played by Tenko's Louise Jameson) investigating an alien distress call that appears to be coming from Victorian England.
Their journey through time and space takes them to the newly built Space Dock Nerva, and sets in motion a homecoming that could put an end to the human race.
Nerva served as a location in the 1975 Doctor Who television episode 'Ark in Space', which inspired writer and director Nicholas Briggs to explore the setting further.
The BBC has also teased further adventures in the audio series, including a Tardis trip to a museum of everything,...
The six-part series, which was produced by Big Finish Productions and recorded in 2012, will be broadcast for the first time later this month.
Featuring a full voice cast, the first episode is titled 'Destination: Nerva', and sees the Doctor and Leela (played by Tenko's Louise Jameson) investigating an alien distress call that appears to be coming from Victorian England.
Their journey through time and space takes them to the newly built Space Dock Nerva, and sets in motion a homecoming that could put an end to the human race.
Nerva served as a location in the 1975 Doctor Who television episode 'Ark in Space', which inspired writer and director Nicholas Briggs to explore the setting further.
The BBC has also teased further adventures in the audio series, including a Tardis trip to a museum of everything,...
- 5/1/2015
- Digital Spy
Her screen credits include Doctor Who, EastEnders, Tenko and Bergerac - but Louise Jameson has also forged a long and impressive career on the stage, and says performing for a live audience will always be her first love.
Jameson's latest stage stint will see her play Dotty in a new production of Noises Off - the 1982 'farce-within-a-farce' by playwright Michael Frayn - at The Mercury Theatre, Colchester.
While she was in the thick of rehearsals, Digital Spy got Louise on the phone to sound off about Noises Off - and, of course, her role on the world's greatest sci-fi series.
Noises Off is often hailed as one of the greatest theatrical comedies ever written. How are you feeling about bringing your version of Dotty to the stage?
It feels extraordinary but it's also been one of the most difficult rehearsal periods I've ever had. The whole thing has to look...
Jameson's latest stage stint will see her play Dotty in a new production of Noises Off - the 1982 'farce-within-a-farce' by playwright Michael Frayn - at The Mercury Theatre, Colchester.
While she was in the thick of rehearsals, Digital Spy got Louise on the phone to sound off about Noises Off - and, of course, her role on the world's greatest sci-fi series.
Noises Off is often hailed as one of the greatest theatrical comedies ever written. How are you feeling about bringing your version of Dotty to the stage?
It feels extraordinary but it's also been one of the most difficult rehearsal periods I've ever had. The whole thing has to look...
- 4/28/2015
- Digital Spy
'Henry V' Movie Actress Renée Asherson dead at 99: Laurence Olivier leading lady in acclaimed 1944 film (image: Renée Asherson and Laurence Olivier in 'Henry V') Renée Asherson, a British stage actress featured in London productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Three Sisters, but best known internationally as Laurence Olivier's leading lady in the 1944 film version of Henry V, died on October 30, 2014. Asherson was 99 years old. The exact cause of death hasn't been specified. She was born Dorothy Renée Ascherson (she would drop the "c" some time after becoming an actress) on May 19, 1915, in Kensington, London, to Jewish parents: businessman Charles Ascherson and his second wife, Dorothy Wiseman -- both of whom narrowly escaped spending their honeymoon aboard the Titanic. (Ascherson cancelled the voyage after suffering an attack of appendicitis.) According to Michael Coveney's The Guardian obit for the actress, Renée Asherson was "scantly...
- 11/5/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Doc Martin season 5
Kieran Kinsella
British TV’s best loved non-Gallifreyan doctor is back in a bumper sized boxset from Acorn Media. Doc Martin: Special Collection – Series 1 – 5 + The Movies includes the entire saga so far. It is the ideal gift for Doc Martin fans who have grown frustrated at the show’s infrequent airings on select PBS stations.
Doc Martin began life as a bit part character in the film Saving Grace. At the time, his last name was Bamford and he kept the same name for two spin-off BSkyB produced made for TV movies. Bamford was a younger, slimmer, happier, more relaxed version of the Doc Martin most of us are now familiar with. The character alterations occurred when BSkyB’s drama unit went the way of the Dodo and ITV chiefs decided to develop their own version of the show. It was decided that the Doc should...
Kieran Kinsella
British TV’s best loved non-Gallifreyan doctor is back in a bumper sized boxset from Acorn Media. Doc Martin: Special Collection – Series 1 – 5 + The Movies includes the entire saga so far. It is the ideal gift for Doc Martin fans who have grown frustrated at the show’s infrequent airings on select PBS stations.
Doc Martin began life as a bit part character in the film Saving Grace. At the time, his last name was Bamford and he kept the same name for two spin-off BSkyB produced made for TV movies. Bamford was a younger, slimmer, happier, more relaxed version of the Doc Martin most of us are now familiar with. The character alterations occurred when BSkyB’s drama unit went the way of the Dodo and ITV chiefs decided to develop their own version of the show. It was decided that the Doc should...
- 5/7/2013
- by Edited by K Kinsella
A dignified comic actor in farce and on TV, and a dedicated disability campaigner alongside her husband, Brian Rix
The acting career of Elspet Gray, who has died aged 83, was obscured but not extinguished by being so closely bound up with her marriage to the farceur Brian Rix. In 1951, Gray gave birth to a daughter, Shelley, who had Down's syndrome. In later life she was active alongside her actor-manager husband after he left the stage in 1977 to work for people with learning disabilities – initially through presenting a BBC television series, and then as secretary general of Mencap. However, she made periodic returns to the stage and maintained a screen presence: in 1979, for instance, she was a paediatrician guest in Fawlty Towers, and in 1994 the first bride's mother in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
As well as bringing up her subsequent three children, she visited Shelley every week in the residential...
The acting career of Elspet Gray, who has died aged 83, was obscured but not extinguished by being so closely bound up with her marriage to the farceur Brian Rix. In 1951, Gray gave birth to a daughter, Shelley, who had Down's syndrome. In later life she was active alongside her actor-manager husband after he left the stage in 1977 to work for people with learning disabilities – initially through presenting a BBC television series, and then as secretary general of Mencap. However, she made periodic returns to the stage and maintained a screen presence: in 1979, for instance, she was a paediatrician guest in Fawlty Towers, and in 1994 the first bride's mother in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
As well as bringing up her subsequent three children, she visited Shelley every week in the residential...
- 2/20/2013
- by Dennis Barker
- The Guardian - Film News
Louise Jameson co. Ian Fraser
Kieran Kinsella
You may know her as John Nettles’ leading lady, as Tom Baker’s able assistant or as the matriarch of a powerful East End family but if you love British TV then it is safe to say that you are a fan of Louise Jameson. Narrowing down my list of questions was no easy task considering that Louise has starred in everything from Doc Martin to Tenko, but when I recently had the chance to speak with her she provided me with a candid incite into her incredibly successful career.
What are your favorite memories of working on Doctor Who? and appearing alongside Tom Baker?
“Not too many of them I’m Afraid but I have fond memories of him recently whilst recording the audio version of our time in Doctor Who. He has been mellow, wonderful, easy going and rather brilliant. I...
Kieran Kinsella
You may know her as John Nettles’ leading lady, as Tom Baker’s able assistant or as the matriarch of a powerful East End family but if you love British TV then it is safe to say that you are a fan of Louise Jameson. Narrowing down my list of questions was no easy task considering that Louise has starred in everything from Doc Martin to Tenko, but when I recently had the chance to speak with her she provided me with a candid incite into her incredibly successful career.
What are your favorite memories of working on Doctor Who? and appearing alongside Tom Baker?
“Not too many of them I’m Afraid but I have fond memories of him recently whilst recording the audio version of our time in Doctor Who. He has been mellow, wonderful, easy going and rather brilliant. I...
- 4/17/2012
- by admin
For all the British television that makes some effort to cross the pond, some shows simply can't be reworked for American audiences. Luckily, most of them make it to us anyway, and the latest, brilliant effort to come by way of PBS (and of course, DVD) is Doc Martin.
Starring the by now legendary Martin Clunes, who has been a part of so many amazing British series that it boggles the mind, Doc Martin is the story of a star surgeon who suddenly develops a blood phobia. With little choice in his career path, he takes the job of Gp for the small village of Portwenn, where he spent much time as a young lad with his aunt (Stephanie Cole).
Hoping that the rural doctor life will consist largely of colds and the odd bruise, Martin hopes that with blood at a minimum he can overcome his problem and return to surgery.
Starring the by now legendary Martin Clunes, who has been a part of so many amazing British series that it boggles the mind, Doc Martin is the story of a star surgeon who suddenly develops a blood phobia. With little choice in his career path, he takes the job of Gp for the small village of Portwenn, where he spent much time as a young lad with his aunt (Stephanie Cole).
Hoping that the rural doctor life will consist largely of colds and the odd bruise, Martin hopes that with blood at a minimum he can overcome his problem and return to surgery.
- 5/7/2011
- by Marc Eastman
- AreYouScreening.com
Coronation Street newcomer Sylvie Cropper is to be a sharp-tongued Blanche Hunt-style character, a report has claimed. Sylvie, played by former Doc Martin and Tenko star Stephanie Cole, will make her first appearance on screen next month when she is introduced as Roy Cropper's estranged mother. According to The Sun today, fans will see Sylvie cause a stir with a number of outspoken remarks shortly after her arrival on the cobbles. One scene featuring the new character reportedly sees her pour scorn on Roy's classic car, telling him: "You're expecting me to (more)...
- 3/24/2011
- by By Daniel Kilkelly
- Digital Spy
Julie Hesmondhalgh has confirmed that Coronation Street fans can expect Roy Cropper's mum Sylvie to cause a stir on the cobbles. In December, it was announced that former Doc Martin and Tenko star Stephanie Cole had been cast in the role of Sylvie, who will soon make the surprise decision to get back in touch with her estranged son. Speaking to Holy Soap about the forthcoming arrival, Hesmondhalgh - who plays Roy's wife Hayley - explained: "There's a cat amongst the pigeons once again - just when you get a bit of peace and quiet and normality back, Roy's (more)...
- 3/7/2011
- by By Daniel Kilkelly
- Digital Spy
Coronation Street's new recruit Stephanie Cole filmed her first scenes for the soap yesterday. The actress - best known for roles in Doc Martin, Tenko and Waiting for God - has been cast in the part of Roy Cropper's mother Sylvie on the ITV1 soap. Writing on Twitter yesterday evening, Andrew Lancel, who plays businessman Frank Foster, confirmed that Cole had made her debut in (more)...
- 3/1/2011
- by By Daniel Kilkelly
- Digital Spy
Doc Martin star Stephanie Cole is to join the cast of Coronation Street, taking on the role of Roy Cropper's mother Sylvie, it has been announced. The actress - also known for her parts in Tenko and Waiting for God - will begin filming with the soap in the New Year and make her first appearance on screen in March, when Sylvie turns up in Weatherfield to stay with Roy and Hayley. According to Corrie's official website, Sylvie has an outspoken attitude and soon makes her mark on the street following her arrival. Speaking of her casting, Cole commented: "I am absolutely delighted to be joining. In any great drama - be it on television or on the stage - the writing comes first, and Coronation Street is brilliantly written. "When I worked at Granada Television a lot in the 1980s, I used to play bridge with Doris Speed...
- 12/17/2010
- by By Daniel Kilkelly
- Digital Spy
Beguiling Japanese star of fringe theatre and popular television
The Japanese actor Eiji Kusuhara, who has died of cancer aged 63, played the sadistic Lieutenant Sato in the television series Tenko (1981-85), was one of the narrators on the cult show Banzai (2001) and appeared on stages across the UK and Europe in a variety of beguiling roles. He was one of the first professional Japanese actors active in London in the 1970s and enjoyed something of a monopoly on roles until he starred alongside a fellow countryman, Togo Igawa, in The Man Who Shot Christmas (1984). Eiji spent most of his adult life in Britain. He always seemed relieved to have left his home country but was also perplexed by British culture. A natural comedian, he thought he was a misfit and constructed an endlessly playful persona for himself.
He was born in Tokyo shortly after the second world war, a time...
The Japanese actor Eiji Kusuhara, who has died of cancer aged 63, played the sadistic Lieutenant Sato in the television series Tenko (1981-85), was one of the narrators on the cult show Banzai (2001) and appeared on stages across the UK and Europe in a variety of beguiling roles. He was one of the first professional Japanese actors active in London in the 1970s and enjoyed something of a monopoly on roles until he starred alongside a fellow countryman, Togo Igawa, in The Man Who Shot Christmas (1984). Eiji spent most of his adult life in Britain. He always seemed relieved to have left his home country but was also perplexed by British culture. A natural comedian, he thought he was a misfit and constructed an endlessly playful persona for himself.
He was born in Tokyo shortly after the second world war, a time...
- 5/27/2010
- The Guardian - Film News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.