Deaths 2022

Deaths 2021

Deaths 2020

Deaths 2019

Deaths 2018

Deaths 2017

Deaths 2016

Deaths 2015

Deaths 2014

Deaths 2013

Deaths 2012

Deaths 2011

Deaths 2010

Deaths 2009


Full list by date of death

Ruby Dee

Actress

Born - 27 October 1922, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Died - 11 June 2014

Iconic African-American actress (and later civil rights activist) of sensitive prettiness who, a few years before her death, became the second oldest Oscar nominee. Born Ruby Wallace, she began her film career in typical all-black movies of the 1940s: That Man of Mine (1946), What a Guy (1948) and opposite boxing champ Joe Louis in The Fight Never Ends (1949). A co-starring role with another sporting great, this time a baseball player, in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), moved her closer to the mainstream and she appeared in several of Sidney Poitier's early films: No Way Out (1950), Go, Man, Go (1954), A Man is 10 Feet Tall (1958), Virgin Island (1958) and A Raisin in the Sun (1961). Many other credits include The Tall Target (1951), The Great American Pastime (1956), Gone Are the Days! (1963), Uptight (1968), Buck and the Preacher (1972), Cool Red (1976), Cat People (1982), Go Tell It on the Mountain (1984), Do the Right Thing (1989), Jungle Fever (1991), Just Cause (1995), A Simple Wish (1997), Baby Geniuses (1999), The Way Back Home (2006), Oscar-nominated in American Gangster (2007), Dream Street (2010), A Thousand Words (2012) and King Dog (2014), her last. She was married (second) to actor Ossie Davis for 56 years until his death in 2005.