10. Leslie Nielsen
The actor played dozens of straight-laced roles on live TV in New York before heading to Hollywood to play…well, more of the same. Despite some good parts now and then, Nielson's career took a complete left turn following his hilarious performance in Airplane! as a doctor who really would prefer that you stop calling him Shirley. More great—and some not so great—comic spoofs followed and kicked off what had to be one of the best second acts in movie history.
9. Lena Horne
The beautiful dancer, singer and actress first gained attention as performer at Harlem's famed Cotton Club. She later made a name for herself appearing in films such as Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather, which spawned her signature tune. Horne became an ardent civil rights proponent even as her own performances were often snipped out of films shown in the southern U.S. After working in television, Horne returned to the stage on Broadway, winning a Tony for her solo show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music.
8. Greg Giraldo
What a shock. The 44-year-old funnyman seemed impervious to everything, so sharply honed was his wit. A Columbia and Harvard Law School-educated attorney who went on to a stellar career as a stand-up, Giraldo was brainy, opinionated and always hilarious during his appearances on The Howard Stern Show or as a judge on Last Comic Standing. (He completely stole every appearance he ever did on the old Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn.) He died of an accidental overdose in a New Jersey hotel room, leaving behind four children and an ex-wife.
7. Barbara Billingsley
The archetypal TV mom, Leave It to Beaver's Billingsley set the pearls-and-good-sense template for hundreds of sitcoms to come since the show's 1957-1963 run (including Happy Days, which lost its own beloved patriarch Tom Bosley this year). Then, anticipating the loose, ironic times ahead, she played a jive-talking version of the same character in Airplane!, thereby ensuring that she was one mother you didn't want to mess with.
6. Corey Haim
A Hollywood cautionary tale, the scrappy star of the feel-good movie Lucas (with future cautionary tales Charlie Sheen and Winona Ryder) soon turned into a bona fide 1980s movie star. He churned out hits like Wild Boys and License to Drive (as one of "the Coreys" with BFF Corey Feldman) until tastes changed and fame waned. Substance abuse problems plagued the actor, as did financial woes, before he died of natural causes.
5. Dennis Hopper
Unlike many of the stars we lost from Hollywood's heyday this year—Tony Curtis, Jean Simmons, Patricia Neal, to name just a few—Hopper rarely stopped working once he sobered up and reignited his career in the 1980s with Blue Velvet and Hoosiers. Starting out as a friend and protégé of James Dean, the actor-director-writer-artist was "difficult" at first (he was blackballed in Hollywood for his onset behavior until John Wayne hired him) before transforming himself into a spokesman for the counterculture with Easy Rider. From that high, he would later hit a professional dry spell in the 1970s, excluding the rare good part such as his Kurtz-worshipping photographer in Apocalypse Now. His final decades were a mix of film and television—he was a regular on TV's Crash before he died—but one constant through his life was a devotion to art and photography.
4. Stephen J. Cannell
You know that show you loved when you were a kid? Chances are this guy came up with it. The mastermind behind The A-Team, 21 Jump Street and The Rockford Files owned television in the '70s and '80s, ultimately having a hand in the creation of 40 TV shows and plus general involvement in many more. Known for his iconic typewriter-tapping logo (followed by a flourish of pulling out and tossing the page to form a "C") at the end of episodes, the writer and producer married his childhood sweetheart and had four children, though one child would die in a beach accident. Later in life, he turned to writing crime novels and saw several TV projects turned into feature films.
3. Gary Coleman
His death seemed like the final indignity for a sad life that never seemed to live up to its early promise. Despite his enormous fame as a child actor on Diff'rent Strokes, Coleman claimed that he'd been ripped off by his parents and seemed to grow into an embittered, unhappy man unable to move on from the past. (He wasn't alone: The son of his late, troubled castmate Dana Plato killed himself this year near the anniversary of his mother's death.) After a lifetime of health and money problems—and a run for the California governorship—Coleman died of a brain hemorrage after a fall in his Utah home.
2. J.D. Salinger
No movie adaptations or series are devoted to his characters (sorry, the Party of Five Salingers were just named after him), but this famously reclusive writer of one novel called Catcher in the Rye and three short fiction collections (that we know of) helped define the voice of America in the second half of the twentieth century all the way to today, whether you're talking Holden Caulfield's influence on Bart Simpson or the sadness of the Glass family and Don Draper in Mad Men. And even more tragically, John Lennon's killer carried Catcher, claiming it as a guide to his actions. But beyond the cult following, we'd remember Salinger just for that one book about a few days in the life of a boy trying to be true in a world full of phonies.
1. Tyler Clementi
This Rutgers college freshman wasn't a celebrity, wasn't a star. He leapt to his death from the George Washington Bridge after his roommate reportedly videotaped Clementi getting intimate with another male student and then broadcast it over the Internet. The suicide shocked and outraged many, and led columnist Dan Savage to create the "It Gets Better" campaign to appeal to young people in the LGBT community who face bullying, abuse and loneliness. Dozens of celebrities and others recorded their own videos to encourage anyone who feels hopeless, and in that this private tragedy has had at least one positive effect: A wave of support that will hopefully stop others from seeking suicide over life.
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