Passages

[GaryC]

She may be the oldest person whose age was ever authenticated, if a theory about Jeanne Calment turns out to have a factual basis.

(Namely, that the woman claiming to be Jeanne Calment might have been her daughter, although the evidence is admittedly circumstantial.)

If that theory is proven, so be it, but I don't think it holds a lot of water. Most experts on the subject would agree, especially as more evidence has been found to support Jeanne Calment's age than for just about any other supercentenarian.

[L.A.]

Earth, Wind, and Fire saxophonist Andrew Woolfolk at 71.

[hearthesilence]

Earth, Wind, and Fire saxophonist Andrew Woolfolk at 71.

A member of the classic years, I love the singles from that era though they also made some excellent albums like That's the Way of the World and the live Gratitude.

[L.A.]

The Poppy Family’s Susan Jacks at 73.

[Pavel]

Klaus Schulze, posted on his Facebook

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Kenneth Tsang, who appeared in all of John Woo's films from A Better Tomorrow through Once a Thief, as well as numerous Jin Yong adaptations for TV, a handful of Hollywood movies (The Replacement Killers, Rush Hour 2, Memoirs of a Geisha, etc.), and the occasional indie project (Butterfly, Prince of Tears).

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Klaus Schulze, posted on his Facebook

Very sad. One of the great pioneers of electronic music and a fascinating composer of proto-new age music. A real loss.

[Gregory]

Yes, and he was still very active with new musical projects — had just recorded a new album, in fact.

[GaryC]

JIll Gascoine, aged 83, after a long period with Alzheimer's. She was mostly on British TV, with leading roles in The Onedin Line, The Gentle Touch and C.A.T.S. Eyes.

[MichaelB]

JIll Gascoine, aged 83, after a long period with Alzheimer's. She was mostly on British TV, with leading roles in The Onedin Line, The Gentle Touch and C.A.T.S. Eyes.

She died two years ago to the day, which I imagine is how that mistake happened!

(But I’ve done it myself.)

[Buttery Jeb]

Neal Adams

[fdm]

Naomi Judd

[L.A.]

Folk singer Judy Henske at 85.

[Fred Holywell]

Joanna Barnes

[L.A.]

Lino Capolicchio.

[beamish14]

Mike Hagerty, one of the ultimate “what the hell do I know you from?” actors

[hearthesilence]

Mike Hagerty, one of the ultimate “what the hell do I know you from?” actors

His Wayne's World appearance for some reason sticks out the most for me.

[Fred Holywell]

David Birney

[dadaistnun]

Kenneth Welsh

[Buttery Jeb]

George Perez

[colinr0380]

Kenneth Welsh

Probably best known for his role as Windom Earle in Twin Peaks, though he had the misfortune and enormous burden of carrying the weight of being the motivating antagonist of the second half of the second season once the Laura Palmer mystery had been prematurely solved. His serial killer suddenly re-entering the life of Dale Cooper and playing cat and mouse thinly veiled Hannibal Lector and Clarice Starling style games with the frankly ludicrously too on the nose modus operandi of putting bodies inside life size chess pieces (because they're playing a deadly game of chess against each other! ) unfortunately did not do much to save that mostly terrible, trying much too hard to be 'quirky', second half of the second season. But his character does end up kidnapping Cooper's love interest played by Heather Graham and spiriting her away into the other dimension of the Black Lodge in that classic Lynch directed final episode of the series.

He had a few really interesting roles in Canadian horror films in the last decade, from the main shifty doctor figure in the Lovecraftian The Void (in which his character does much the same thing to the love interest as Windom Earle did in Twin Peaks!) to being the narrator of Psycho Goreman (also directed by Steven Kostanski). And also has a major role in George A. Romero's last film, the incredibly bleak even for Romero's zombie series tale of mutually assured destruction Survival of the Dead.

He turns up in a Woody Allen film, 1988's Another Woman (and is a voice on the radio in Radio Days), is in Atom Egoyan's 2008 film Adoration and appears in a supporting role in Death Wish V (which for those of us in the UK is showing on ITV4 at Midnight on Wednesday 11th)

[dadaistnun]

My wife and I had a good laugh when he shows up as Katharine Hepburn’s father in The Aviator. I mean, what could make meeting your girlfriend’s family for the first time more awkward than having Windom Earle as the patriarch?

[ksmred2]

Kang Soo-yeon

[colinr0380]

Kang Soo-yeon

I'm not too familiar with South Korean cinema but Kang Soo-yeon worked with a number of notable directors including starring in Im Sang-soo's first feature, 1998's Girl's Night Out (which I don't think had a Western disc release, as the director more came to attention in the West with 2005's The President's Last Bang and the 2010 remake of The Housemaid) and a couple of films directed by the very culturally specific filmmaker Im Kwon-taek with her starring role in 1987's The Surrogate Woman (for which she won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival), 1989's Come, Come, Come Upward (which apparently had the misfortune of being released the same year as a similar (and better known in the West, not least through its Criterion Laserdisc release) South Korean film about the trials and tribulations of monastic living, Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?) and 2011's film about paper-making Hanji (which she also produced).

She is also in the 1991 film Berlin Report by filmmaker Park Kwang-su (though that filmmaker is more famous for the film they made afterwards, 1993's To The Starry Island) and in the same year's The Road to the Racetrack by Jang Sun-woo (the filmmaker who in 1995 directed the entry on South Korean cinema for the BFI's Century of Cinema season, Cinema On The Road, and was the subject of the Tony Rayns documentary The Jang Sun-woo Variations)

[MichaelB]

Dennis Waterman. Not exactly a big-screen star - though of course he did headline Sweeney! (1976) and Sweeney 2 (1978) opposite John Thaw and played supporting roles in numerous films from the 1960s onwards, including Hammer's The Pirates of Blood River (1962) and Scars of Dracula (1970). But his main claim to fame was as one of the most enduring British television stars of the last half-century, thanks partly to the original small-screen version of The Sweeney (1974-78) and then of course Minder (1979-94), which was originally written as a vehicle specifically for him, even if George Cole's Arfur Daley kept upstaging him. Even two decades later he was famous enough to inspire a running gag in Little Britain.

Interestingly, both he and Cole were members of a very exclusive club: child actors who managed to turn their careers into adult stardom.

(His other long-runner was New Tricks, from 2003-2015.)