The excellent deaths among the actors were in line with the trend of 2025: no real unexpected events, but many situations generated by illness and age. David Lynch passed away on January 16, aged 79, due to respiratory problems. On February 26, Gene Hackman left us, at the beautiful age of 95 but in quite sad circumstances: the body was found together with that of his wife (according to the autopsy who died a week before him) in their home in Santa Fe, where they lived isolated from the rest of the world, also due to Hackman’s Alzheimer’s. On 29 March, at the age of 91, Richard Chamberlain, emblem of the golden age of generalist TV, passed away for eternity, Doctor Kildare and/or Father Ralph of Blackbirds. On September 16, at the age of 89, Robert Redford, global icon of liberal America and protagonist of an absurd number of films that everyone, really everyone, knows, said goodbye. On 23 September, at the age of 87, the death of Claudia Cardinale, the symbolic actress of the golden age of Italian cinema, while on 11 October it was the turn of Diane Keaton, at 79 years old, due to pneumonia, capable as an actress, director and also producer of freeing herself from the shadow of Woody Allen. On December 14th the death of Rob Reiner, director of Harry ti presento Sally: he was 78 years old, but his disappearance, and that of his wife, were caused by stab wounds inflicted by whom it is not yet known, even if there are well-founded suspicions. Compared to the characters just mentioned, Michael Madsen, Quentin Tarantino’s favorite actor, who died at the age of 68 on 3 July, and Val Kilmer who died at 65 on 1 April, after a decade of battle against cancer, seemed almost like children: his last performance was moving, already devastated by the disease but still in the role of Iceman, in Top Gun: Maverick. For cinema, the farewells of 2025 were closed on December 28 by Brigitte Bardot, charismatic icon of France and animal rights activists, who passed away at the age of 91 after having always lived in her own way. They may not have been world stars, but in Italy and the Canton of Ticino 2025 was also marked by the deaths of Eleonora Giorgi, at 72 years old and after a long illness, and Nadia Cassini, at 76, as well as Alvaro Vitali, 75: the great era of genre cinema had in any case already made them eternal.
