Celebrity Deaths | featured news

Tony Scott, director of "Top Gun," "Days of Thunder" and "Crimson Tide," had inoperable brain cancer, a source close to him told ABC News.

British-born filmmaker Tony Scott, director of such Hollywood blockbusters as "Top Gun" and "Crimson Tide," jumped to his death on Sunday from a bridge over Los Angeles Harbor, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office said.

Joe Kubert's art seemed tattered at the edges and populated by rangy heroes with haunted eyes. He and his wife founded the only accredited trade school for comic book artists. Joe Kubert was never a superstar comics artist — his work didn't have the necessary bombast or polished edges — but the man who drew ragged, soulful soldiers in "Sgt. Rock," "The Haunted Tank" and "Enemy Ace" did something his characters would have admired: Kubert marched farther and longer than anyone else and proved himself a natural leader.

Ron Palillo, who played nerdy teen Arnold Horshack on 'Welcome Back, Kotter' dies at 63.

Helen Gurley Brown, who fed the sexual revolution of the 1960s with her best-seller “Sex and the Single Girl” and then turned around the failing Cosmopolitan magazine by injecting her philosophy that women could have it all -- “love, sex and money” -- has died. She was 90.

Mel Stuart, an award-winning documentarian who also directed "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory," has died. He was 83.

Marvin Hamlisch, the singularly productive and sensationally decorated composer of musicals like "A Chorus Line" and songs like "The Way We Were," died in Los Angeles on Monday after a brief illness.

Garrett Reid, the oldest son of Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid, was found dead Sunday morning in his room at training camp at Lehigh University.

Gore Vidal, the author, playwright, politician and commentator whose novels, essays, plays and opinions were stamped by his immodest wit and unconventional wisdom, his nephew said Tuesday.

Sherman Hemsley, the actor who made the irascible, bigoted George Jefferson of "The Jeffersons" one of television's most memorable characters and a symbol for urban upward mobility, has died.