2022 seems to have been a particularly hard year for deaths of celebrities – with obviously Queen Elizabeth being of most international and historical significance, but with many others gaining worldwide attention when they passed away. Here are just 10 of the personalities who will be most missed in 2023.
Terry Hall
Singer Terry Hall found fame as frontman of Two-Tone ska band The Specials in the late 1970s, with hits including A Message To You, Rudy, Rat Race and Ghost Town.
When the band split in 1981, Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple formed Fun Boy Three, though there was a reunion in 2008 when The Specials released the critically acclaimed Encore, followed by Protest Songs in 2021.
Terry Hall passed away after a short illness at the age of 63, with overhead signs on the Coventry city centre ring changed to read: ‘Too Much, Too Young, RIP Terry Hall. 1959-2022’
Robbie Coltrane
While the younger generation will remember him for playing giant Hagrid in the Harry Potter films, Robbie Coltrane had previously starred as criminal psychologist Dr Eddie “Fitz” Fitzgerald in the 1990s TV crime drama Cracker, as well as making memorable appearances in Blackadder The Third in 1987, as Big Jazza in Tutti Frutti, in Nuns On The Run (1990) and as KGB man Valentin Zukovsky in James Bond films Goldeneye and The World Is Not Enough.
He won three BAFTAs and was awarded an OBE.
Robbie Coltrane died aged 72 after suffering from multiple organ failure and sepsis.
See also: Golden Globes Return With a More Diverse Approach
Olivia Newton-John
Born in England but raised in Australia, singer and actress Olivia Newton-John was already a star when she was cast as shy Sandy in the 1978 film adaptation of the musical Grease, playing against John Travolta. She had represented the UK at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing fourth, in the year ABBA won with Waterloo, but Grease helped her to cast off her family-friendly image and adopt a raunchier persona for songs such as Physical.
She sold more than 100 million records, but a number of musical comebacks met with varying levels of success over four decades which were also spent battling cancer and campaigning in the fields of health, the environment and animal rights.
Awarded a Damehood in 2019, Dame Olivia passed away aged 73, with John Travolta saying in tribute: “Yours from the moment I saw you and forever!”
