Celebs You Sadly Didn't Know Passed Away — It Turns Out the Naming Rights! Membership Option Was For Real and Someone Is Now Five Hundred Bucks Poorer Presents Nat

Celebs: they basically make life worth living. Where would we be without them? Life would be a joyless march to the grave without famous people to give it color, meaning and purpose. But what happens when these famous people die? Sure it makes the papers, but can the famously flawed fake news media be trusted to adequately cover the death of every famous person?

Sadly, the answer is no. Tragically, so many legitimately super-famous people die every year that an overworked and under-funded entertainment press can’t even keep track of them all, let alone ensure sufficient coverage for each unfortunate celebrity death.

That’s why it has fallen to articles with titles exactly like this to relay the very sad news that beloved entertainers that you adorably think are still alive are actually worm buffets who won’t be hitting auditions any time soon on account of being six feet under and locked inside a coffin for eternity.

Here are some stars that you sadly might not know tragically passed away.

Movie stars don’t get much bigger than Tom Cruise, and no, that’s not a crack at the diminutive, Leprechaun-like actor’s famously diminutive size. Since breaking through as the cocky hunk of Reagan-era hits like Risky Business, Taps and All the Right Moves Tom Cruise has reigned as one of our most consistent and ambitious movie stars.

The Top Gun icon has worked with a who’s who of the greatest filmmakers of the past fifty years, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, John Woo, Brad Bird, Brian DePalma, Cameron Crowe, Stanley Kubrick and Paul Thomas Anderson while remaining a top box-office draw.

Tom Cruise’s potentially deadly stunt work in the Mission Impossible series wowed critics and audiences alike. The daredevil Scientologist has cleaned up at the box-office with this thrilling series of pulse-pounding action smashes while winning rave reviews from critics but it’s doubtful that Harold Bloom, who died recently at the age of 89, counted himself among the mega-bucks franchise’s super-fans.

After all, Bloom rose to prominence as a champion and defender of the Western literary canon in the face of multiculturalism and diversity. It would be very out of character for him to get excited about a blockbuster series of action movies based on an old TV show.

The word “iconic” could have been coined specifically for Harrison Ford. He first captured the imagination of the American moviegoing public with his breakthrough turn as a sexy racer in the smash hit coming of age period piece American Graffiti. But Ford didn’t rocket to the very apex of the A-list until he reunited with American Graffiti writer-director George Lucas for a space opera set long ago in a galaxy far away called Star Wars.

Playing Han Solo has kept Ford busy for literally decades but he’s also found time to play another American hero beloved by children everywhere: Indiana Jones. But there’s more to Ford than just big franchises and genre movies. He’s an Oscar-nominated dramatic actor who has done fine character work in The Conversation, Apocalypse Now and Mosquito Coast.

Ford has left an indelible mark on pop culture, just as the recent death of his Star Wars co-star Peter Mayhew, legendary for his portrayal of outer space fuzzball Chewbacca, undoubtedly left an imprint on Ford’s heart and soul.

Chris Evans rose to fame as flaming thrill seeker Johnny Storm, AKA The Human Torch in Fantastic Four and its sequel. But the actor’s career didn’t truly catch fire until he was cast as Captain America, that rock-solid exemplar of wholesome American values, in the Captain America and The Avengers franchises and the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Evans’ savvy social media presence and incisive critiques of the Trump administration prove he’s more than just a pretty face while his character actor turns in off-kilter fare like Snowpiercer betray both his ambitions and talent as a heavyweight dramatic character actor.

Yes, Evans’ time as Captain America has unmistakably come to a close but his personal and professional future could not look rosier.

Evans may be a hunk and a brain, but he’s also an 1980s kid, so the recent death of Max Wright, best known for playing Willie, Alf’s long-suffering comic foil, at 75, undoubtedly had to hit him hard.

Who could have foreseen that the young actor who made his name playing a cross-dressing young man on the go in Bosom Bodies would go on to become one of our best, best loved and most enduring cinematic superstars? The overachieving national treasure picked up back to back Academy Awards for Best Actor for his performances in Philadelphia and Forrest Gump and was nominated, but did not win, for Big, Saving Private Ryan and Cast Away.

Hanks has a reputation as one of the nicest guys in the business, so it’s possible that when he learned that Bill Macy, best known for playing Bea Arthur’s husband on Maude, died recently at 97, he sent the late actor’s widow flowers out of respect.

That assumes, of course, that Hanks knew that Macy had died, which could very easily not be the case, which is the rock-solid premise of this excellent list.

Call John Travolta the comeback kid! Hollywood all but wrote him off after a string of stinkers like Moment to Moment, Perfect, Two of a Kind and The Experts but he came back strong as the charming romantic leading man of the high-concept baby comedy Look Who’s Talking. When that comeback faded, he came back in an even bigger way as the heroin-addicted hitman anti-hero of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

Travolta has experienced more than his share of highs and lows through the years; learning of the recent death of Laugh-In funnyman Arte Johnson would undoubtedly qualify as a nadir. You bet your sweet bippy that Travolta would have been deeply affected by news of Johnson’s death, if he was even aware of it at all, which is a VERY big if.

Taylor Swift became a huge superstar at 16. That level of fame would crush many, if not most people, but Swift took it in stride. The coltish country princess pivoted lucratively to the pop market, becoming one of our biggest superstars in the process. And Swift hasn’t even hit thirty yet! Who can even imagine what kind of incredible success lies in the “You Were Meant For Me” hit-maker’s future?

Unless something goes seriously wrong, Swift has decades of huge mainstream success to look forward to. The same, unfortunately cannot be said of Nick Tosches, the legendary biographer of Dean Martin, Jerry Lee Lewis and Sonny Liston, whose colorful journey through life ended recently when he died at home in Manhattan at the age of 69.

But you knew that, didn’t you?

Oh you didn’t? Thought not.

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