In Memoriam

[VCC]

Donald Sutherland great actor Kelley's heroes a fav
RiP

[Zenith]

Donald Sutherland great actor Kelley's heroes a fav
RiP

RIP.

Obituary: Donald Sutherland



With almost 200 credits to his name and 6ft 3in to his frame, the late Donald Sutherland cast a literal and figurative shadow over his industry for almost 50 years.

Born in July 1935 in Saint John, New Brunswick, he was a radio news reporter in his youth and graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in engineering.

But it was not long before the acting bug took hold, prompting him to leave his native Canada and travel to London in 1957.

After an unrewarding stint studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (Lamda), he spent 18 months at Perth Repertory Theatre in Scotland.

"It was the first theatre I ever played where the audience actually laughed when I was being funny," he told the Daily Record in 2013.

"The response I got from audiences gave me confidence and security for the first time."

Small roles in British film and television followed, among them appearances alongside Christopher Lee in the horror films Castle of the Living Dead and Dr Terror's House of Horrors.

The first of these was directed by Warren Kiefer, whose surname Sutherland gave to his oldest son Kiefer when he was born shortly afterwards.

Other roles around this time included parts in episodes of The Saint, one of which was directed by its star Roger Moore.

It was on the strength of that episode that Sutherland landed his breakthrough role in World War Two action film The Dirty Dozen.

Sutherland was not the first choice to play irreverent soldier Vernon Pinkley, one of 12 outcasts chosen by Lee Marvin's major for a suicide mission behind enemy lines.

But director Robert Aldrich was so impressed by the scene in which Pinkley impersonates a general that his part was expanded.

Sutherland's eye-catching performance led him to winning one of the lead roles in M*A*S*H, a satirical comedy about medics in the Korean War.

His character, Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce Jr, uses insubordination and gallows humour to deal with the daily grind of combat and carnage.

Sutherland's off-kilter presence saw him land another war film role as the appropriately named Sergeant Oddball, in Kelly's Heroes.

Yet he was on more restrained form in 1971's Klute, playing a detective whose hunt for a missing person is assisted by a high-priced call girl.

Jane Fonda was Sutherland's co-star in Alan J Pakula's film and won an Oscar for her role.

The politically active couple dated for two years, but the romance did not last. "It was a wonderful relationship right up to the point we lived together," he would later remark.

Another sexually charged thriller, 1973's Don’t Look Now, took Sutherland to Venice under Nicolas Roeg's direction.

The film featured a sex scene of such frankness it was widely believed he and co-star Julie Christie had had sex for real - a rumour Sutherland later discounted.

Sutherland continued to collaborate with auteurs, playing a sadistic fascist in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 and the title role in Federico Fellini's Casanova.

Fellini later said he had cast the actor as the fabled lothario because he was "a sperm-filled waxwork with the eyes of a masturbator".

The 1970s also saw him play an IRA member in The Eagle Has Landed, a pot-smoking college professor in National Lampoon's Animal House, and the lead in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The 1980s began with Sutherland playing the father of a suicidal teenager in Robert Redford's Oscar-winning Ordinary People.

The decade also saw him play a British sergeant major in Hugh Hudson's Revolution and appear with Kate Bush in the video for her 1985 track Cloudbusting.

Sutherland kept up his prodigious work rate in the 1990s, appearing in such films as Backdraft, JFK, Six Degrees of Separation and A Time to Kill.

The latter saw him appear alongside his actor son Kiefer, who had made his first screen appearance in 1983's Max Dugan Returns, another of his father's films.

Sutherland turned to television in the 2000s, appearing in such series as Dirty Sexy Money and Commander-in-Chief.

In recent years, though, his role as the venal President Snow in the Hunger Games franchise has seen him embraced by a new generation of film fans.

"I hadn't even heard of the [Suzanne Collins] books, but it became patently apparent to me that this was something," he told the Telegraph, in 2015.

"It was the first thing I'd read in years that could become a creative political stimulus for young people."

Sutherland was married three times. His first marriage, to former child actress Lois Hardwick, lasted from 1959 to 1966.

His second marriage, to actress Shirley Douglas, lasted from 1966 and 1971 and produced two children, son Kiefer and daughter Rachel.

He went on to have three sons, Roeg, Rossif and Angus, with his third wife, Canadian actress Francine Racette.

Sutherland was never nominated for an Oscar but received an honorary Academy Award in 2017.

His only British Academy Award (Bafta) came in 1974, in recognition of his work in Don't Look Now and Steelyard Blues.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-52070783

[Rockape]

Another wonderful actor leaves us..... RIP.

[Zenith]

https://www.espn.com/football/story/_/i ... dies-crash

Former Cameroon midfielder Landry Nguemo, 38, dies in crash

Former Celtic and Bordeaux midfielder Landry Nguemo died in a car crash in his homeland, Cameroon on Thursday at the age of 38.

The Cameroon Football Federation confirmed the news via statement.

"FECAFOOT have just learned the news of the death of the former Indomitable Lion Landry Nguemo following a traffic accident. "FECAFOOT offer our condolences to those close to him, and to all the family of football," the statement said.

The defensive midfielder made his name in French football at Nancy, where he was a League Cup winner in 2006, and spent time on loan at Celtic before moving permanently to Bordeaux in 2011.

He spent three years with Les Girondins before subsequent spells with Saint-Etienne and in Turkey with Akhisar Belediyespor and Kayserispor.

He finished his career in 2019 following a brief time with Norwegian side Kongsvinger.

Between 2006 and 2014, Nguemo amassed 41 caps for Cameroon, representing the Lions at two Africa Cup of Nations tournaments.

He was an unused substitute in the 2008 final defeat by Egypt in Accra.

Since retirement, the native of Cameroon's West Province coached the youth team of Nancy and also invested in his homeland.

He sought to improve the education of Cameroon's young footballers, while he also tried his hand at property development, and only a few days ago, invited Brentford and Indomitable Lions forward Bryan Mbeumo to visit a new build - named CAN House - in Nguemo's hometown of Dschang.

Celtic paid tribute to their former player on their website.

"Everyone at Celtic Football Club is shocked and saddened at the news of Landry N'Guemo's passing at the young age of 38," the club said in a statement.

"The thoughts and prayers of everyone at Celtic Football Club are with Landry's family and friends at this sad time."

RIP.

[UFGN]

GLADIATORS READY!!

RIP John Anderson

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0jqv9dlyxwo

[Zenith]

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/arti ... 27p2mmzxpo

Ex-Leicester boss Shakespeare dies

Former Leicester City manager Craig Shakespeare has died at the age of 60, his family has announced.

Shakespeare was undergoing treatment for cancer back in October 2023.

He also worked for West Brom, Hull, Everton, Watford, Aston Villa and Norwich and had a spell as England assistant boss in 2016.

A statement released on behalf of his family via the League Managers' Association said Shakespeare "passed away peacefully at home surrounded by his family".

It added: "While the family are immensely proud of his footballing achievements as both a player and a coach, to us, his family, he will always primarily be a loving and loved husband, father, son, brother and uncle.

"The loss is devastating to us all and we would ask that privacy be given at this incredibly difficult time as we try to come to terms with, and mourn, the loss of a very special person.

"The family would like to thank and acknowledge the many prayers and good wishes sent during the past few difficult months, many of which we were unable to respond to but all meant a lot to Craig and the family."

Shakespeare was Claudio Ranieri's assistant in 2015-16 when Leicester created one of football's all-time greatest stories to win the Premier League.

He replaced Ranieri as manager in February 2017 but, having been appointed permanently in June on a three-year contract, was sacked in October.

Shakespeare's most recent role was another spell as Foxes assistant in April 2023 under Dean Smith, but he left after their relegation from the Premier League the following month.

During his playing career as a midfielder, he featured for Walsall, Sheffield Wednesday, West Brom, Grimsby, Scunthorpe, Telford and Hednesford.

RIP.

[Zenith]

https://www.theguardian.com/film/articl ... es-aged-88

French film star Alain Delon dies aged 88



Celebrated actor and star of Plein Soleil and Le Samouraï has died, his children have said

Alain Delon, the celebrated actor who starred in a string of classic films such as Plein Soleil, Le Samouraï and Rocco and His Brothers, has died aged 88, his children have told French media.

“Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, as well as [his dog] Loubo, are deeply saddened to announce the passing of their father. He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” they said in a statement, adding that the family had asked for privacy.

Identified with French cinema’s resurgence in the 1960s, Delon played a string of cops, hitmen and beautifully chiselled chancers for some of the country’s greatest directors, including Jean-Pierre Melville, René Clément and Jacques Deray. He also made films with auteurs including Luchino Visconti, Louis Malle, Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-Luc Godard – though never quite succeeded in his attempts to make it in Hollywood.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, wrote on X that Delon had through his acting roles “made the world dream … he offered his unforgettable face to shake our lives”.

“He was more than a star. He was a French monument,” Macron added.

The culture minister, Rachida Dati, wrote: “We believe he was immortal … his talent, his charisma, his aura made him destined for a Hollywood career at a young age, but he chose France.”

Born in 1935 in Sceaux in the Paris suburbs, Delon was expelled from several schools before leaving at 14 to work in a butcher’s shop. After a stint in the navy (during which he saw combat in France’s colonial war in Vietnam), he was dishonourably discharged in 1956 and drifted into acting. He was spotted by the Hollywood producer David O Selznick at Cannes and signed to a contract, but decided to try his luck in French cinema and made his debut with a small role in Yves Allégret’s 1957 thriller Send a Woman When the Devil Fails.

Delon’s intense good looks made an immediate impact, and he swiftly graduated to lead roles. In 1958 he was cast opposite Romy Schneider in Christine. They played a soldier and a musician’s daughter who fall in love. Delon and Schneider began a high-profile real-life romance off the set, which confirmed Delon’s burgeoning reputation as a sex symbol.

In 1960 he made two films that had a significant impact internationally: the Patricia Highsmith adaptation Plein Soleil (AKA Purple Noon) and Rocco and His Brothers. The former, a French-language version of The Talented Mr Ripley, turned Delon into a major star while Rocco – a saga about a southern Italian peasant family moving to the prosperous north – brought him into the orbit of Visconti, one of Europe’s foremost auteurs. Another Italian auteur, Antonioni, cast him as a smooth-talking stockbroker in 1962’s L’Eclisse. Delon reunited with Visconti in 1963 for The Leopard (AKA Il Gattopardo), a large-scale epic set in Risorgimento Sicily, adapted from the celebrated Lampedusa novel.

Such was Delon’s international profile that he began a serious attempt to break into English-language movies, starting with a small role in the Anthony Asquith-directed anthology comedy The Yellow Rolls-Royce. Delon appeared in Lost Command, about French paratroopers in the second world war, the Dean Martin western Texas Across the River, and Is Paris Burning?, another wartime epic starring Kirk Douglas. However, none were successful enough in Hollywood to establish him there, and Delon returned to France.

In 1967 he made the cult classic Le Samouraï with the director Jean-Pierre Melville, in which he played a raincoat-wearing hitman. That film’s domestic success kicked off a string of crime films, including The Sicilian Clan alongside Jean Gabin, the Marseille-set Borsalino directed by Deray, and another Melville classic, The Red Circle. Delon also found time to appear opposite Marianne Faithfull in Girl on a Motorcycle, in which a leather-clad Faithfull rides a bike across Europe, as well as La Piscine, opposite his former lover Schneider – which was remade in 2016 as A Bigger Splash with Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes.

La Piscine coincided with a huge public scandal, the “Markovic affair”, which reached into France’s highest echelons after Delon’s bodyguard Stefan Markovic was found dead in a rubbish dump in 1968. François Marcantoni, a notorious underworld figure and longtime friend of Delon’s, was charged with the murder, but the charges were eventually dropped. The plot thickened when compromising photos belonging to Markovic were uncovered that allegedly contained members of the French elite, including the wife of the presidential candidate Georges Pompidou. In the end, nothing was proved, but Delon’s close association with a gallery of unsavoury characters became widely known.

Through the 1970s Delon continued to make films at a steady pace, without the same level of impact as in previous decades. Monsieur Klein, in which Delon played an art dealer during the second world war whose identity is confused with a Jewish fugitive of the same name, won the César for best film in 1977; in 1985, he won the best actor César for Bertrand Blier’s surreal fable Notre Histoire. Delon also branched out, producing a string of films with his own company, making his directorial debut in 1981 with Pour la Peau d’un Flic, and promoting boxing and designing furniture.

Delon began to slow his output in the 1990s after playing a double role in Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague. In 1997 he announced his retirement from acting, but returned in 2008 to play Julius Caesar in the French live action hit Asterix at the Olympic Games.

Delon had a complicated personal life, including extended relationships with Schneider, Mireille Darc (from whom he separated in 1982 after 15 years together) and Rosalie van Breemen, a Dutch model with whom he had two children and from whom he separated in 2002. He was married to Nathalie Delon from 1964 to 1968; they had one child, Anthony, in 1964. In 1962, the singer and model Nico gave birth to a son, Christian; Delon denied paternity but the child was adopted by Delon’s mother.

The former culture minister Jack Lang spoke of Delon’s kindness and their friendship of more than 20 years. Lang said Delon was “an acting giant, prodigious … a prince of the cinema”.

“He was extremely modest, reserved, restrained, shy at the same time; even if he did express himself brutally from time to time, he did it with a flourish,” Lang said.

Valérie Pécresse, the president of the Île-de-France region, wrote on X: “Goodbye dear Alain,” while Éric Ciotti, of Les Républicains, wrote that Delon was a star apart: “France mourns a sacred giant who existed in the daily lives of French people across the generations and who will continue to thrill us for a long time to come.”

The writer and film director Philippe Labro wrote: “Goodbye friend. A wonderful collection of films, an incredible and fascinating personality. Beauty is not enough to explain the exceptional evolution of his talent. He was the ultimate star. The Samurai.”

RIP.

Great actor: as talented as he was handsome. Less impressed with the things he stood for.

[Zenith]

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ar ... a-football

Former Leeds and Cardiff defender Sol Bamba dies aged 39

• Bamba fell ill while working at Adanaspor in Turkey
• Defender moved into coaching with Cardiff last year




The former Cardiff and Leeds defender Sol Bamba has died at the age of 39. Bamba had been working as a coach at Adanaspor, with the Turkish club announcing the news late on Saturday night.

A club statement read: “Our technical director, Souleymane Bamba, who fell ill before the match against Manisa Football Club yesterday, was taken to Manisa Celal Bayar University Hospital and unfortunately lost his battle for life there. Our condolences to his family and our community.”

Bamba, who earned 46 caps for Ivory Coast, also played for Leicester and Middlesbrough before moving into coaching with Cardiff last year. In 2021 he recovered from non-Hodgkin lymphoma after undergoing chemotherapy. Bamba managed to return to the pitch less than five months after his diagnosis.

Leeds paid tribute to their former captain in a statement which read: “Rest in peace, Sol, you will be forever in our hearts.”

A Middlesbrough statement said: “We are devastated to learn of the passing of Sol Bamba at the age of 39. Our thoughts are with Sol’s family and friends at this time. RIP Sol.”

Bamba, who was born in France to Ivorian parents, began his playing career at Paris Saint-Germain before moving to Scotland. He helped Dunfermline reach the Scottish Cup final in his first season, before joining Hibernian in 2008 and then Leicester in 2011.

After spells in Turkey and Italy he joined Leeds, where he was club captain, while in his first full season at Cardiff he helped them clinch promotion to the Premier League. He played more than 100 times for the Welsh club and was assistant manager for six months in 2023.

Cardiff posted on X: “It is with the deepest sadness that we have learnt this evening about the passing of club legend, Sol Bamba. As a player and coach, Sol’s impact on our football club was immeasurable.

“He was a hero to all of us, a leader in every dressing room and a true gentleman. Our thoughts are with his friends, family and everyone lucky enough to know and love Sol.”

Neil Warnock, who managed Bamba at both Middlesbrough and Cardiff, said on X: “I can’t believe I won’t see that beaming smile again. I’m so happy that Sol was part of my life and we had such brilliant memories together. I’m heartbroken for Chloe and the family and all my thoughts are with them. Sol was a ray of sunshine and I’ll miss him so much.”

Bamba represented Ivory Coast at the 2008 Olympics and played in the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations. He made his final international appearance two years later.

RIP.

[Ach]

James Earl Jones aged 93

This one stings

Grew up to that legendary voice in epic roles. We've lost a genuine legend

RIP

[Ach]

Toto Schillaci at 59

Never heard of him before or after Italia 90 but what a tournament he had. My first ever world cup and he was the standout

[Rockape]

Toto Schillaci at 59

Hadn't heard he'd died but thats very sad at just 59. What a WC the that was in 1990 and can still hear the commentator screaming.... SCHILLACI!!!

[themessiah]

Great little player.....RIP Toto

[Zenith]

Toto Schillaci at 59

Hadn't heard he'd died but thats very sad at just 59. What a WC the that was in 1990 and can still hear the commentator screaming.... SCHILLACI!!!

RIP.

[Ach]

Maggie smith

Another legend gone

Favourite character in the harry Potter films

[UFGN]

Kris Kristofferson.

Huge country music star who had a big influence on among many others, the Stereophonics.

RIP