2026 has been a year that will leave a mark. Within just the first few months, the worlds of film, music, television, sports, and civil rights lost figures whose influence stretched well beyond their individual careers. Some had been in declining health for years.
Others were taken far too soon. A few seemed almost impossible to imagine gone. What follows is a look back at nine people whose passing shaped the year and whose work will outlast it.
1. Robert Duvall
Robert Duvall died on February 15 at age 95. He was an Oscar winner for Tender Mercies and received six other nominations for The Godfather, The Great Santini, The Apostle, Apocalypse Now, A Civil Action, and The Judge. His screen debut came in 1962 in To Kill a Mockingbird, where he played Boo Radley without speaking a single line and still managed to be haunting.
That kind of restraint defined him. Duvall starred in three of director Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic films, playing Tom Hagen in the first two Godfather movies and Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. At 95, he had outlived almost everyone who came up alongside him, and he was still working into his final decade. Few actors leave behind a body of work that expansive and that consistently excellent.
2. Catherine O’Hara
On January 30, Catherine O’Hara died at age 71 after suffering a pulmonary embolism. She was a two-time Emmy Award winner, best known for her roles in Schitt’s Creek, Home Alone, Best in Show, and Beetlejuice. O’Hara had one of the more remarkable late-career resurgences in recent television history.
Playing Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek introduced her to an entirely new generation, and that audience had no idea what they’d been missing. Her earlier work with Christopher Guest in films like Best in Show and A Mighty Wind set a standard for improvisational comedy that few have matched. The loss hit audiences hard, partly because she seemed to be at a creative peak.
3. James Van Der Beek
James Van Der Beek died on February 11 at the age of 48, after a public journey with stage 3 colorectal cancer. He had announced his diagnosis in late 2024 and handled it with a degree of openness that drew admiration from people who had followed him since his Dawson’s Creek days.
He was 48, a fact that is hard to sit with. His work extended well beyond Dawson’s Creek, with films including Varsity Blues, The Rules of Attraction, and Labor Day, along with television work on CSI: Cyber and Pose. He never quite shed the Dawson label, but the people who followed his career closely knew there was a great deal more to him than that one role.
4. Rev. Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson, the civil rights activist and reverend, died on February 17 at the age of 84. He had been battling a rare disease known as progressive supranuclear palsy. Jackson’s career spanned decades of American political and social history. He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination twice in the 1980s and became a defining voice in conversations about racial equality, economic justice, and international diplomacy.
He was a polarizing figure to some, but his impact on American civil rights organizing, particularly in the years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, is simply a matter of historical record. For a generation of activists, he was a constant presence and an enduring symbol of persistence.
5. Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris, the martial arts champion who became an iconic action star and led the hit series Walker, Texas Ranger, died March 19. He was 86. The mythology around Norris grew so large over the years that it sometimes overshadowed the genuine career underneath it.
He was a legitimate martial arts champion before Hollywood ever called, and he built a film and television career on a kind of blue-collar, no-nonsense toughness that resonated with a huge audience for more than three decades. The internet jokes turned him into an almost satirical figure, but the man himself was a serious athlete and a committed entertainer. Walker, Texas Ranger alone ran for eight seasons.
6. Bob Weir
Bob Weir was an American guitarist and songwriter who was a co-founder of the Grateful Dead, a hugely influential San Francisco-based musical group that formed in the mid-1960s and was known for an eclectic mix of psychedelic rock instrumentation and jazzy improvisation. He died on January 10.
He was 78. Although he beat cancer in the summer of 2025, he succumbed to underlying lung issues. For Deadheads, losing Weir just two years after Phil Lesh passed was a particular kind of grief. He had kept the music alive through Dead & Company and Wolf Bros right up to the end, refusing to let the catalog go quiet. He joined the band at 17, and never really stopped.
7. Kyle Busch
Two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch passed away on May 21, 2026. At the time of this writing, his cause of death is unknown. He was 41 years old. His family said he died after severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis. Busch was the kind of driver fans either loved or found impossible to root for.
He was brash, dominant, and relentless, with more wins than anyone across NASCAR’s three national series. Forty-one years old. He was scheduled to race on Memorial Day weekend when he fell ill. There are very few athletes in any sport who redefined dominance in their era the way Busch did in stock car racing, and his death at this age left an enormous gap in a sport he had largely defined for two decades.
8. Peabo Bryson
Robert “Peabo” Bryson died on June 2 at a hospital in Marietta, Georgia, of complications from a stroke. He was 75. Bryson was best known for contributing his talents to the Oscar-winning Disney duets “Beauty and the Beast,” sung alongside Celine Dion, and “A Whole New World,” sung with Regina Belle for the animated film Aladdin. Those two songs alone secured a permanent place in the cultural memory of an entire generation.
But Bryson had been putting out R&B music since the late 1970s, and he had a catalog of balladry that went far deeper than Disney. His voice was genuinely extraordinary, a smooth, controlled instrument that made even ordinary material sound elevated.
9. Marjane Satrapi
French-Iranian artist and activist Marjane Satrapi, whose graphic novel Persepolis brought home the struggle of the Iranian people to millions around the world, died on June 4. She was 56. Satrapi was one of those rare artists who used a personal story to illuminate something universal. Persepolis began as a memoir about growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and became one of the most celebrated graphic novels ever published, later adapted into an Oscar-nominated animated film.
The Narges Foundation described Satrapi as “a fearless advocate for feminism, women’s rights” and someone who championed the struggles and resilience of Iranian women. She was 56, with more than enough work still ahead of her. Her voice in both art and activism will be genuinely difficult to replace.
