# Notable Deaths in 2026: The Icons We Lost
Every year carries its share of heartbreak, and 2026 has been no exception. The figures we’ve lost this year shaped our culture in ways both obvious and subtle — through the characters they embodied, the songs we couldn’t stop humming, and the barriers they broke with quiet determination. Here, we remember a few of the extraordinary personalities who departed this year, whose legacies will endure long beyond their final curtain calls.
Sam Neill (1947–2026)
There was something about Sam Neill that felt timeless — a suave, Old Hollywood charm that could pivot effortlessly from blockbusters to art house intimacy. The actor, who passed away on July 13, 2026, at the age of 78, left behind a body of work that spanned continents, genres, and generations of moviegoers.
Born Nigel Neill in Northern Ireland to a New Zealand officer in the British Army, he emigrated to New Zealand as a child and adopted the name Sam because, as he put it, there were too many Nigels at his school. It was at a boarding school in Christchurch where his passion for acting took root, leading him into local New Zealand productions. His role in the 1977 thriller “Sleeping Dogs” helped revive the dormant New Zealand film industry, and his breakout came in the 1979 Australian film “My Brilliant Career,” starring alongside fellow rising star Judy Davis.
From there, Neill glided between Australian, European, and American cinema and television with remarkable ease. He earned a Golden Globe nomination for the series “Reilly: Ace of Spies,” portrayed Damien the Antichrist in “The Final Conflict” — the third installment of “The Omen” franchise — and took on the role of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in the miniseries “The Tudors.”
One of his most memorable turns came alongside Sean Connery in “The Hunt for Red October,” where he played a Soviet submarine officer who dreams of one day living in Montana, or perhaps Arizona. He also starred opposite Meryl Streep twice, in “Plenty” and “A Cry in the Dark.”
In Jane Campion’s “The Piano,” Neill delivered a performance that divided audiences. His character’s consuming jealousy over his wife’s affair — one abetted by her beloved piano — culminates in a particularly nasty act of revenge. “With ‘The Piano,’ you know, I had terribly mixed reactions,” Neill told “CBS This Morning” in 1999. “Some people would come up and say, ‘I really loved the character that you play and I understood him and I bled for him.’ And that’s the way I felt about him. But on the other hand, a lot of people said, ‘I hated you in ‘The Piano.’ People have this odd way of confusing you with the character that you play. A guy that chops off his wife’s finger isn’t going to make a lot of friends with those sort of people.”
But it was in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster “Jurassic Park” that Neill won over all audiences. As paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, whose visit to an island of cloned dinosaurs sets the stage for deadly encounters, Neill became a face of one of the most beloved film franchises in history. He returned to the role in “Jurassic Park III” and “Jurassic World: Dominion.”
Beyond acting, Neill was a country farmer at heart. His organic winery, Two Paddocks, on New Zealand’s South Island, produced pinot noir and riesling wines. His social media was a delight — featuring farm animals named after his actor friends, including a chicken named after his “Jurassic Park” co-star Laura Dern.
In a 2010 interview with Country Life, Neill reflected on what he loved most: planting things, “in particular, trees. Then I wander about them and take great satisfaction from their growth. … I do admire and emulate those who plant knowing they will never see the full fruits of their labor in their lifetime.”
It’s a fitting epitaph for a man who planted so much — in cinema, in his community, and in the soil of the land he loved.
Bonnie Tyler (1951–2026)
Few voices in popular music were as instantly recognizable as Bonnie Tyler’s. The Welsh singer, who passed away on July 8, 2026, at 75, will forever be associated with “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Holding Out For a Hero” — songs that became part of the cultural fabric of the 1980s and never really left.
What’s remarkable is that Tyler’s signature sound was born from accident and defiance. After undergoing surgery to remove nodules from her vocal cords, she was ordered to rest her voice. Instead, she screamed — permanently altering it. The result was a gravelly, powerful tone reminiscent of Rod Stewart, one that carried her first major hit, 1978’s “It’s a Heartache,” to worldwide acclaim.
Born Gaynor Hopkins in a small town outside Swansea, she was a coal miner’s daughter raised in public housing. She recorded “Top of the Pops” on her father’s reel-to-reel tape recorder and emulated idols like Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, and Tina Turner by singing into her hairbrush. “I fell in love with singing just from doing that,” she wrote in her autobiography, “Straight from the Heart.” “Looking back, even then my voice had a husky tone to it, but I didn’t think much of it. I thought everyone’s voices were different from each other’s.”
Her 1977 debut album, “The World Starts Tonight,” featured the single “Lost in France” and earned her a breakthrough artists nomination at the Brit Awards. But it was her collaboration with Meat Loaf songwriter-producer Jim Steinman that changed everything. “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” the debut single from her fifth studio album, “Faster Than the Speed of Night,” hit No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard chart in 1983 and has since accumulated more than 1 billion streams. The following year, “Holding Out For a Hero” became a standout on the bestselling soundtrack to “Footloose.”
Later releases included 1984’s “Here She Comes,” from Giorgio Moroder’s reimagining of “Metropolis.” She also recorded duets with an impressive roster of artists: Rod Stewart (“Battle of the Sexes”), Cliff Richard (“Taking Control”), Francis Rossi (“Someone’s Rockin’ Your Heart”), Vince Gill (“What You Need From Me”), and Mike Oldfield (“Islands”). Her 2013 country album, “Rocks and Honey,” recorded in Nashville, featured “Believe in Me,” which she performed as the U.K.’s entry in that year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
Over her career, Tyler recorded 22 studio and live albums and earned three Grammy nominations. In 2023, she told the BBC she never tired of singing her biggest hit. “Of course I don’t! I love it!” she said.
And we never tired of hearing it.
Wally Funk (1939–2026)
Wally Funk spent her life in the clouds, and for a few extraordinary minutes in 2021, she finally reached the stars. The aviation pioneer passed away on July 8, 2026, at 87, leaving behind a legacy of persistence that should inspire anyone who’s ever been told their dream is out of reach.
After taking her first flight lesson at age nine, Funk became a licensed pilot at 17 and logged more than 19,000 flying hours over her lifetime. But her deepest ambition — to travel beyond Earth’s atmosphere — eluded her for decades.
In the early 1960s, Funk was a member of the Mercury 13, a group of female pilots put through the same training program as NASA’s all-male astronaut corps. “We had no idea what we were going through; we didn’t know where it was taking us,” Funk told “CBS This Morning: Saturday” in 2021. The tests were grueling: “X-raying all over your body, every bone, every tooth, sticking water into your ears. I had to drink radioactive water.”
The women of Mercury 13 met, and frequently surpassed, the results of their male counterparts. But NASA required astronauts to be military test pilots, and at the time, the military barred women from flying. It wasn’t until 1983 that an American woman, Sally Ride, finally flew into space.
Funk went on to become the first female inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration and the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. But the dream of spaceflight never faded. “That is my quest. … I love flying, that’s my job, that’s what I love. And I’m not a quitter,” she said.
In 2021, at age 82, Funk finally got her chance. She boarded Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket alongside Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and two others, including 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, who became the youngest person to fly into space. Funk became the oldest woman to travel beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
True to form, she grew impatient when there was a delay at the Texas launch site. “Time’s passing, and so I hit the button, I said, ‘What’s the holdup?'” she told CBS News Texas.
Then the six-decade wait ended. “We’re lifting off, and we’re going up, and I’m looking out the window, I said, ‘Wow! There goes the ground!'” When capsule separation brought weightlessness, she exclaimed, “Oh, I love it, I love it,” as she floated in zero gravity.
After landing in the Texas desert, she said, “I feel so lucky that my dream has come true.” But she was already looking ahead: “I want to go back up in space. That’s where my brain has been, in space, ever since I came back.”
Wally Funk’s brain may well still be up there. And honestly, who could blame her?
A Final Note
These are just a few of the remarkable individuals we’ve lost in 2026. Each one, in their own way, reminded us that a life well-lived isn’t measured in years alone, but in the courage to chase dreams, the generosity to share one’s gifts, and the grace to keep going when the world says no. We extend our condolences to their families, their friends, and the millions of us who were lucky enough to be their audience.