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

Luise Rainer

Actress

Born - 12 January 1909, Dusseldorf, Germany, or Vienna, Austria
Died - 30 December 2014

Dark-haired, doll-faced Austro-German actress with finely pencilled eyebrows, expressive face and huge dark eyes who came to Hollywood and became the first person to win back-to-back Oscars. But in fact Rainer, one of the longest-lived of all actors - she died a fortnight before her 106th birthday - made very few films. Her first was a German short, Yes, Heaven Over Vienna (1930), followed by Sehnsucht 202 (1932) and Heut' kommt's Drauf an. From a Jewish family, she fled to America in 1934, and settled in the movie colony there. After Escapade (1935), she made her two Oscar-winning films, The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937). Her Hollywood career declined thereafter: The Big City (1937), The Emperor's Candlesticks (1937), The Toy Wife/Frou Frou (1938), Dramatic School (1938) and The Great Waltz (1938). After leaving MGM, she made only Hostages (1943), although she remained in America until 1954. There were just a few more movie appearances, of which only her role in The Gambler (1997) is of any significance. After that she was seen only in Poem - Ich setze den Fuss in die Luft und sie trug (2003) and the 2007 documentary Hollywood Chinese. The first of her two husbands was playwright Clifford Odets. She died from pneumonia.