RIP: Elisabeth Sladen (1948-2011)

Actress Elisabeth Sladen, who played faithful companion Sarah-Jane Smith on Doctor Who for 38 years, has died of complications arising from a battle with cancer she kept quiet for several years. She was 63.

Sladen made her Doctor Who debut as feisty reporter Sarah-Jane Smith in 1973, when Jon Pertwee was playing The Doctor, and throughout Tom Baker's tenure until 1981. Upon leaving the show she appeared in several Who specials and radio plays (including ill-fated TV pilot K-9 & Company), before a guest appearance in Doctor Who's 2006 episode "School Reunion" led to Sladen being given her own TV series the following year, entitled The Sarah-Jane Adventures. 

Sladen's career was dominated and defined by her work on Doctor Who over almost four decades, as she appeared in only a few other TV shows and plays in her lifetime.

Russell T. Davies, Sarah-Jane Adventures' creator:

I absolutely loved Lis. She was funny and cheeky and clever and just simply wonderful. The universe was lucky to have Sarah-Jane Smith, the world was lucky to have Lis.

Steven Moffat, incumbent Doctor Who showrunner:

"Never meet your heroes" wise people say. They weren't thinking of Lis Sladen. Sarah-Jane Smith was everybody's hero when I was younger, and as brave and funny and brilliant as people only ever are in stories. But many years later, when I met the real Sarah-Jane -- Lis Sladen herself -- she was exactly as any child ever have wanted her to be. Kind and gentle and clever; and a ferociously talented actress, of course, but in that perfectly English unassuming way. There are a blessed few who can carry a whole television show on their talent and charisma -- but I can't think of one other who's done it quite so politely.

Elisabeth Sladen is survived by her husband Brian Miller and daughter Sadie Miller.

DoctorWhoNews.net have a comprehensive write-up of Elisabeth Sladen's passing.

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RIP Leslie Nielsen (1926-2010)

Shirley you can't be serious!

This news genuinely saddens me, as Leslie Nielsen was one of my favourite comedy actors. Like many people, he first came to my attention as the deadpan doctor in the fantastic Airplane!, before starring in the wonderful Naked Gun trilogy of spoofs (based on the flop TV show Police Squad!), although his early career was surprisingly serious (The Poseidon Adventure, Ransom!, Forbidden Planet). The Canadian actor appeared in over 100 movies and an incredible 1,500 televisions shows (The Golden Girls, Fantasy Island, Hawaii Five-0, M*A*S*H, Gunsmoke, etc) in a career spanning 60 years.

It was a shame Leslie Nielsen got typecast by his later spoof work, as his filmography over the past 20 years is full of weak parodies that flopped at the box office: Spy Hard, Dracula: Dead & Loving It, Wrongfully Accused, Superhero Movie, Scary Movie 3, and many others. Nielsen was basically there to give those movies a tincture of credibility, in the vague hope that fans of his classic work would be persuaded to watch them. That never really worked, although he was often the best thing about those later movies.

For me, Nielsen was like a cool, funny granddad you were always glad to see. He was one of those comedians whose very presence made you smile, and could make you giggle with the slightest expression. Many of my favourite comedy moments in film involve Leslie Nielsen, so here are a few choice clips of him as The Naked Gun's bumbling Lt. Frank Drebin:

Leslie Nielsen died from complications relating to pneumonia in a Fort Lauderdale hospital in Florida. He was 84. Rest In Peace.

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Kevin McCarthy RIP (1914-2010)

You may not known the name, but you perhaps recognize the face. Kevin McCarthy was a stage/screen actor whose career in TV/film lasted for several decades, but he was most famous for starring in 1956 sci-fi classic Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Joe Dante (a fan of McCarthy's) often cast him in his movies, too; from Piranha and The Howling, to Innerspace and Twilight Zone: The Movie. It was in those '80s films that I came to recognize him.

McCarthy (Oscar-nominated for his role as Biff Loman in 1951's Death Of A Salesman), died at the incredible age of 96 last Saturday, of natural causes.

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RIP Peter Graves (1926-2010)

Oveur and out.

American actor Peter Graves has died a few days before his 84th birthday, apparently of natural causes following a family brunch. I'm not going to claim I was a keen follower of his career, but Airplane! is one of my favourite films and Graves' role as the genially peculiar Captain Oveur was a highlight. I'm too young to remember him as Jim Phelps in the Mission Impossible TV series, but I've often noticed him and his distinctive voice in many TV shows and movies through the years. Graves is survived by his brother James Arness, his wife Joan Endress, and their three daughters. You can read a great obituary at The Guardian here, and by way of a tribute, here are all his scenes from Airplane!:

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RIP Edward Woodward OBE (1930-2009)

BAFTA-winning British actor Edward Woodward has died, at the age of 79. Woodward started out in theatre, but moved into television to become a household name starring in Callan. He went on to achieve over 2,000 TV credits in his career! But, he'll probably be best remembered as the pious policeman in cult horror movie The Wicker Man (1973). In the mid-'80s, the American TV series The Equalizer also brought him international fame and a Golden Globe, playing a vigilante ex-secret agent. More recently, Woodward had appeared in Hot Fuzz, The Bill and EastEnders. He died at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro today, having recently battled illnesses including pneumonia. He is survived by his wife, Michelle Dotrice, and four children.

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RIP Patrick Swayze (1952-2009)

Patrick Swayze's oeuvre marks an unfortunate gap in my film knowledge (having never seen Dirty Dancing, let alone Road House or The Outsiders), but I'm still saddened to hear of his death after a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. The only popular movies of his I saw, enjoyed, and will watch again are Ghost and Point Break (and Donnie Darko, if you'll allow.) Dirty Dancing just never appealed to me at the time, so it's just a jumble of catchphrases, that dance move, and a soundtrack filtered through pop-culture jokes, parodies and reality shows.

Still, Swayze's an actor intrinsically linked to "The '80s" (consequently etched into memories of that era in some indefinable way), I liked the how he managed to stage a mini-comeback post-millennium, and he was definitely a man whose bravery in the face of terminal illness will be an inspiration to many. He spent the last months of his life writing his autobiography ("The Time Of My Life"), and I'm sure it'll be a great read. Maybe now's the time to give that dance flick a spin...

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