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STARS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Though Paul Scofield, 86, was up there with Olivier, Richardson and Gielgud, he was, to American movie audiences, the least-known of Britain's great actors. He received an Oscar for playing Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, which he had originated on stage; but another prime Scofield role, of Salieri in Amadeus, went to F.; Murray Abraham in the movie version — one of the medium's all-time go-figure casting decisions. That seemed not to trouble Scofield, who devoted most of his intellectual energy, his towering presence and potent voice to the theater, playing Hamlet, Othello, Lear, John Gabriel Borkman, the whole classical works. He is survived by actress Joy Parker, his wife of 65 years.
Glasgow-born Eileen Herlie, 90, costarred in the only Shakespeare film to win the top Oscar (unless you count Shakespeare in Love): she was Gertrude to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, playing the mother of an actor 11 years older than she. She was Gertrude again to Richard Burton's Hamlet on Broadway in 1964, two years after headlining with Ray Bolger in the musical All American (book by Mel Brooks), in which she sang that plangent elegy for lost love, Once Upon a Time. She achieved lasting afternoon renown as Myrtle Fargate on All My Children, from 1976 until June of last year, a few months before her death.
Two stars of Ingmar Bergman films passed on to Heaven, Hell or The Silence. Stig Olin, 87, was Bergman's handsome, angst-ridden alter ego in the director's early films; his daughter is actress Lena Olin. Eva Dahlbeck, 87, was the worldly-wise blond with the knowing smile in three of the master's lighter triumphs: Secrets of Women, A Lesson in Love and the immortal Smiles of a Summer Night. She retired from acting in the 60s and wrote a dozen novels. The buoyant Dahlbeck had long endured Alzheimer's disease; Sven Lampell, her husband of 63 years, died eight months before she did.
Back when foreign films had an impact on America's cappuccino class, Japanese stalwart Ken Ogata, 71, starred in Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine and The Ballad of Narayama. Western moviemakers also saw his appeal: Paul Schrader cast Ogata to headline his Mishima bio-pic, and Peter Greenaway ornamented Ogata's body with tattoos in The Pillow Book. Jean Desailly, 87, impressed U.S. art-house fanciers as the Superintendant in Jean-Pierre Melville's Doulos and the middle-aged lover in Francois Truffaut's The Soft Skin. Back home, Desailly was revered for the Paris theater company he created with his companion Simone Valere. He married her 48 years after they began living together.
Lydia Shum Din-ha, 62, nicknamed Fei-fei (Fatty), was the biggest star in the Hong Kong movie line of full-figured femmes; she once proclaimed that her measurements were 51-44-48. Appearing in Mandarin- and Cantonese-language features as a teenager, later playing supporting roles in films with Sammo Hung, Stephen Chow and Maggie Cheung. With her bouffant hairdo and horn-rimmed glasses, Shum was a TV fixture and all-round media fave for 40 years. In 2002 she underwent gallstone surgery, emerging from the hospital to brandish a jar of 36 gallstones for the paparazzi.
A final nostalgic shudder for two Anglo-horror scream queens. Hazel Court, 82, lent her sensitive face and ample bosom to the Hammer film Curse of Frankenstein, then settled in as the fraught heroine of Corman's Poe series (Premature Burial, The Raven, Masque of the Red Death). Julie Ege, 64, born Julie Dzuli in Norway, did a bit in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, then was promoted by Hammer Films as "The New Sex Symbol of the 70s". The titles of her movies — Creatures the World Forgot, Rentadick, The Mutations, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, The Amorous Milkman — announce their low aspirations. After her film career, Ege worked as a nurse in Oslo.
The young stars of the Brazilian smash hit Black Orpheus — Marpessa Dawn, 74 (actually from Pittsburgh) and Breno Mello, 77 — died seven weeks apart last summer. The movie won the Cannes Palme d'Or and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film, and popularized the work of its composers, Luiz Bonfá (Manha de Carnaval, anglicized as A Day in the Life of a Fool) and Antonio Carlos Jobim. Looking for other mortal coincidences? Bonfá died in 2001 on the same day as the actor who played the Angel of Death in Black Orpheus.
Guillaume Depardieu, 37, encapsulated the haunted career of many children of famous actors. At three, in The Wonderful Crook. he played what he was: the son of Gerard Depardieu, France's top male star of the past 35 years. He would also play the young version of Gerard in Tout les matins du monde (1992) and a 2000 TV miniseries of Les Miserables. A slim blond with a winsome camera presence, Guillaume starred in Leos Carax's Pola X, Jacques Rivettte's Don't Touch the Axe and five films by Pierre Salvadori. But father and son rarely got along. Gerard told Paris Match: "He's a real poet who touches me enormously, but who is very difficult, incorrigible ... He has tried to contact me but I don't reply because I think that's better for his mental health." In an as-told-to autobiography, Guillaume slammed his father as "a coward, a cheat and lazy ... obsessed with the desire to be loved and the need for money." In his short, unhappy life, Guillaume was convicted on theft, drug and assault charges. A 1995 motorcycle accident required 17 operations, and finally the amputation of his leg in 2003. His last arrest, in May 2008, was for driving his scooter while intoxicated. He contracted pneumonia while on a film set in Romania and died months later, just after he and his father finally reconciled.