Remembering the celebrities and public figures who died in 2024

Every year, the ABC publishes scores of obituaries about celebrities and public figures.

Obituaries do more than pay tribute to those we’ve lost — they’re an opportunity to look back at a life well lived and the creativity that has driven them.

From a helicopter pilot-turned-janitor-turned-country star to a dancer who travelled the world and lived to 110, these men and women made their mark.

Let’s take a look back at who we lost in 2024.

Quincy Jones, entertainment legend

A titan of the music world who worked with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Snoop Dogg, Quincy Jones died in November aged 91.

Born in 1933, Jones overcame a difficult childhood spent running with gangs on the streets of Chicago to become one of America’s most influential music composers and producers.

Best known for producing some of the biggest albums of the 20th century, including Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Jones composed dozens of film scores and arranged records for Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, among many others. He won 28 Grammy awards.

Jones overcame racial barriers to become one of Hollywood’s first black executives, and his film and TV production company is responsible for 90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and the film The Colour Purple.

“There’s an entire universe waiting in his seven decades of music. And while you listen, hear him, hear how he imbued love into every single second of music he made. That was his real legacy, love,” his daughter, actor Rashida Jones, said at the Oscars Governors Awards.

Liam Payne, pop idol

Former One Director singer-songwriter Liam Payne died tragically in October after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina. He was 31.

Payne’s death sparked an outpouring of grief from fans of the popular teenage boy band, which formed in 2010 after auditioning on British reality TV show The X-Factor.

One Direction sold more than 70 million records, becoming one of the most popular groups of the 21st century.

In the years following One Direction’s split in 2016, Payne spoke openly about the pressure of being a teenage star and his struggle with drugs and alcohol.

“We had an absolute blast but there were certain parts of it where it just got a little bit toxic,” he told Men’s Health in 2019.

In early 2024, Payne released his first solo single in three years.

He is survived by his parents, siblings, and seven-year-old son Bear.

Michael Mosley, doctor and broadcaster

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British physician and broadcaster Michael Mosley died unexpectedly in June, aged 67, while holidaying in Greece.

After studying philosophy and medicine, Mosley joined the BBC as an assistant producer in the 1980s.

He went on to present and produce science and health programs over four decades, becoming a mainstay on British television. He also presented several documentaries in Australia.

Mosley gained worldwide recognition after he popularised intermittent fasting with the publication of his bestselling 2013 book The Fast Diet. He began experimenting with fasting after he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

While some of Moseley’s dieting advocacy attracted criticism, he was praised for his unrelenting commitment to science and ability to connect with audiences.

“He was a truly generous, curious, warm-hearted man who cared as much about people themselves as the science that could help them,” Australian TV presenter Marc Fennell wrote on X.

Eileen Kramer, trailblazing Aussie dancer

Treasured dancer and choreographer Eileen Kramer died in November, shortly after her 110th birthday.

Born in Sydney, Kramer joined the Bodenwieser Ballet, considered to be Australia’s first modern dance company.

“It felt marvellous, it was prestigious,” she said in 2015.

Kramer lived and performed overseas for much of her life, meeting Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong along the way.

She stopped dancing to care for her husband after he suffered a stroke, nursing him for 20 years. Returning to Australia aged 99, she began dancing publicly again.

“She dedicated herself to showing an old person can also contribute and be a dancer and influence people. It gave a new view, it [dance] isn’t just a young person’s thing,” former ballerina Barbara Cuckson said.

Maggie Smith, beloved English actor

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Dame Maggie Smith, one of England’s most celebrated actors of the stage and screen, died in September aged 89.

Smith received critical acclaim playing Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier’s Othello in 1965. She won Academy Awards for 1969’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and 1978’s California Suite. She is one of the few actors to have won an Oscar, Emmy and Tony award.

But it wasn’t until Smith was in her 70s that she became a household name as the sharp-tongued Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey.

“I’d been working around for a very long time before Downton Abbey and life was fine — nobody knew who the hell I was,” Smith said in a 2017 BFI interview.

Smith is best remembered by younger audiences as Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films. Smith “was a fierce intellect, a gloriously sharp tongue, could intimidate and charm in the same instant and was, as everyone will tell you, extremely funny,” Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe said.

Smith was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990, and King Charles paid tribute to her after her death, calling her a “national treasure”.

Brian Wenzel, iconic Aussie actor

Brian Wenzel, the Australian actor who played Sergeant Frank Gilroy in the long-running TV soap opera A Country Practice, died in May aged 94.

Wenzel starred in the Channel Seven series for 12 years until 1992, winning a silver Logie for Best Supporting Actor in 1983. All up, he said he appeared in more than 3,000 hours of television, also featuring in popular soap Neighbours, Rove Live, The Young Doctors and Matlock Police.

Born in Adelaide in 1929, Wenzel had a troubled childhood. At age 10 his parents put him and his older brother in a boys’ home — the first of five he would live in, and flee from.

“They would beat the living suitcase out of us” as punishment for running away, Wenzel told the Advertiser in 2017.

Eventually Wenzel returned to live with his mother. As a teenager he took a job with a circus, looking after ponies, but soon began performing in the ring. He became a professional actor at the age of 17.

In 2021 Wenzel revealed he had suffered two mini strokes and could no longer walk unaided. “I got old all of a sudden. I can’t work anymore, which I find really frustrating,” he told New Idea magazine.

According to Channel Seven he died in nursing care, leaving behind his wife Linda, who he married in 1957.

Wenzel was a “passionate family man and devoted Carlton supporter” who would leave “an irreplaceable mark on the Australian film and television industry”, his agent Jennifer Hennessy said.

John Blackman, radio and TV legend

Australian radio and television personality and the voice of Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s quick-witted comedic puppet Dickie Knee, John Blackman died in June aged 76.

He had been diagnosed with skin cancer in 2019 and had surgery to remove part of his jaw.

Blackman began his media career at Goulburn radio station 2GN in 1969. In 1971 he began working on the fledgling morning children’s TV show Hey Hey It’s Saturday, which evolved into an entertainment and variety show and was moved to the night slot in 1984.

Blackman was an announcer on Hey Hey but he also voiced several of its comedic characters including Dickie Knee, the Angel and Mrs McGillicuddy. He worked on the show until it was cancelled in 1999, returning when it was revived briefly in 2009 and 2010.

Blackman returned to radio in the late 1990s and early 2000s, hosting shows on 3AK and Triple M in Adelaide. His last gig was at Magic 1278 in Melbourne in 2015-16.

The host of Hey Hey It’s Saturday, Daryl Somers, said he was “devastated” by the loss of his “beloved friend”.

“He had a God-given talent to make people laugh, especially me,” Somers said. “He used to say his mission on Hey Hey was to break me up, and at times I’d be crying with uncontrollable laughter. Sadly today, I’m just crying.”

Richard Simmons, American fitness guru

Dubbed “the clown prince of fitness” by People magazine in 1981, fitness guru and short-shorts sporter Richard Simmons died in his Los Angeles home in July. He was 76.

Simmons was an overweight teenager who shared his weight loss tips on the Richard Simmons Show, which aired in the early 1980s. In it, he performed aerobic exercise workouts to his live audience, often in flamboyant outfits.

He also authored several best-selling books, created the Deal-A-Meal diet plan, opened workout studios and featured in exercise videos. He cast real people — chubby, balding or non-telegenic — in his videos to make his fitness goals seem attainable.

“I think I’m just a good example of a chubby, fat, unhappy kid who lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, and dreamed, and now all my dreams are coming true,” Simmons told a TV host in 1980.

But he was also the target of media personalities Howard Stern and David Letterman. Stern, for instance, once teased him until he cried.

In 2017, after Simmons had not been seen in public for several years, he became the subject of a popular podcast called Missing Richard Simmons, which discussed theories about what might have happened to him (one critic called it “an invasion of privacy masquerading as a love letter”).

But in 2022 Simmons’s spokesperson told The celebrity.land that he was “living the life he has chosen”.

Shannen Doherty, 90210 star

Best known for her roles in the 1990s TV hits Beverley Hills, 90210 and Charmed, actress Shannen Doherty died in July after a years-long struggle with cancer. She was 53.

Doherty first rose to prominence in the 1980s as a child actress, starring in the TV series Little House on the Prairie and Our House and the film Heathers. But she became a star playing Brenda Walsh in the popular high school soap opera Beverley Hills, 90210, whose first episode aired in 1990.

Doherty and her 90210 co-stars regularly made tabloid headlines, with Doherty gaining a reputation for hard partying and conflict and drama in her personal life.

After she was written out of 90210’s fourth season in 1994, Doherty went on to star in the films Mallrats (1995) and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001). She also played Prue Halliwell in the TV series Charmed, which ran for eight seasons from 1998.

Doherty was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015. She announced she was in remission in 2017. But her cancer returned in 2020 and, in 2023, she revealed it had spread to her brain, then her bones.

She continued working after her diagnosis, launching a podcast in December 2023 in which she reflected on her career, her relationships and her health.

“I’m not done with living. I’m not done with loving. I’m not done with creating. I’m not done with hopefully changing things for the better,” she told People magazine in 2023. “I’m not done.”

James Earl Jones, voice of Darth Vader

James Earl Jones, the actor who voiced Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy and Mufasa in Disney’s The Lion King, died in September aged 93.

Born in Mississippi in January 1931, Jones was raised by his maternal grandparents after his parents divorced and his mother remarried and moved away.

“I was raised by a very racist grandmother” who blamed all white people for slavery, and Native American and Black people “for allowing it to happen”, Jones told the BBC in 2011.

“She was the most racist person, bigoted person I have ever known.”

His childhood trauma left him with deep scars and as a young boy Jones developed a stammer. By age 8 he was stuttering so badly he stopped speaking entirely — until he overcame his disability in high school by reciting poems and joining debating teams.

After moving to New York City in 1955, Jones studied at the American Theater Wing and Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio, going on to win minor roles in a string of Shakespeare plays in the 1960s.

His film debut was as Bombardier Zogg in Dr Strangelove (1964) and by the 70s and 80s he was in high demand for stage and screen roles, starring in movies including Conan the Barbarian (1982), Matewan (1987), Coming to America (1988), Field of Dreams (1989) and Cry, the Beloved Country (1995).

Jones won many awards during his career: Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys, Kennedy Center honours and an honorary Oscar.

Barbara Taylor Bradford, multi-million-selling novelist 

Barbara Taylor Bradford, who wrote stories of women fighting for love and power in a man’s world, died in November aged 91.

At age 16, she left school to become a reporter for The Yorkshire Evening Post. For 30 years she worked in roles including fashion editor and columnist, but writing novels was her dream.

She became a publishing sensation in her 40s, with the saga A Woman of Substance. Published in 1979, the novel was a multi-generational chronicle of the travails and triumphs of retail baron Emma Harte, who would be featured in several other Bradford novels.

Bradford averaged nearly a book a year as one of the world’s most popular and wealthiest writers. She had a strict writing routine: at work behind her IBM Lexmark typewriter by 6am, break around 1pm, then back to writing until 6pm, at the latest.

She was published in 40 languages and sold more than 90 million copies around the world.

Kris Kristofferson, singer-songwriter and actor

Texas-born actor and singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson died in September aged 88.

A former US Army pilot, Kristofferson worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio hoping to break into the industry.

He became a prolific songwriter, known for hits including Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down and Help Me Make It Through the Night. He was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known when performed by others, such as Ray Price (For the Good Times) or Janis Joplin (Me and Bobby McGee).

Kristofferson wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music, and was part of a new breed of country songwriters alongside peers such as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.

Shelly Duvall, era-defining actress

Shelly Duvall, the Texas-born star of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, died in July, aged 77.

At her peak, Duvall was a regular star in some of the defining movies of the 1970s and 1980s, particularly working with director Robert Altman.

Gaunt and gawky, Duval was not a conventional Hollywood starlet, but her wide-eye presence sang on screen, including in Thieves Like Us, Nashville, Popeye, Three Women and McCabe & Ms Miller.

The film critic Pauline Kael called her the “female Buster Keaton”.

Duvall disappeared from movies almost as quickly as she arrived in them. By the 1990s, she began retiring from acting, with her last role in 2002’s Manna From Heaven, when she then retreated from public life.

Donald Sutherland, journeyman actor

Donald Sutherland, whose acting career spanned more than half a century, died in June, aged 88.

He never stopped working, ultimately appearing in nearly 200 films and series.

Sutherland was known for offbeat characters such as Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H movie, the hippie tank commander in Kelly’s Heroes and the stoned professor in Animal House.

Over the decades, Sutherland showed his range in more buttoned-down — but still eccentric — roles in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People and Oliver Stone’s JFK. His role in the Hunger Games introduced him to a new generation.

Sutherland — whose son Kiefer followed him into the business — wrote a memoir, Made Up, But Still True, that was released after his death.

Michael Leunig, beloved cartoonist

Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig died in December,  aged 79.

Leunig’s early work appeared in Woman’s Day and London’s Oz magazine and his first book of cartoons, The Penguin Leunig, was published in 1974.

His prints, paintings and drawings have been exhibited in public and private collection. In 1999 he was declared a national living treasure by the National Trust.

He was a regular contributor to The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. In September 2024, he was dismissed from The Age, 55 years after he penned his first cartoon for the paper.

Some of his work attracted controversy in his later years, but Leunig said it was his job to “probe the tender spots” because he felt they were the most important.

John Marsden, YA author and teacher

Marsden wrote the Tomorrow book series, beginning with the 1993 novel Tomorrow, When the War Began, about a hypothetical war where Australia is invaded.

The series sold millions of copies world wide before being adapted for TV and film, and  made him one of Australia’s most renowned young adult novelists.

He won many major awards for children’s and adult fiction, and in 2006 received the Lloyd O’Neil Award for contributions to Australian publishing.

Marsden also founded and served as principal at two schools in regional Victoria, Candlebark near Romsey and Alice Miller in Macedon.

Jimmy Carter, former US president

Jimmy Carter, the former US president who became a crusader for human rights and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in later life, died on December 29, age 100. 

Carter served one term as the 39th president between 1977 and 1981 and lived longer after leaving the White House than any other ex-president.

Prior to his 100th birthday Carter said he was only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris. He voted by mail on October 16.

Raised in segregated rural Georgia, Carter’s politics were influenced by the civil rights era and was established as a progressive politician. 

His presidency oversaw an historic peace deal between Israel and Egypt and an arms control treaty with the Soviet Union. He is also remembered for the events that overwhelmed the era: inflation, a global energy crisis, war in Afghanistan and the US hostage crisis in Iran.

Carter’s tireless work for humanity after his presidency saw him receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.