List of Famous people who died at 40

Sachiko Kamachi , known professionally as Izumi Sakai , was a female Japanese pop singer, songwriter, and member of the group Zard. As Sakai was the only member who stayed in the group while others joined and left regularly, Zard and Sakai may be referred to interchangeably. She was the best-selling female recording artist of the 1990s and has sold over 37 million copies of sales, making her one of the best-selling music artists in Japan of all time.

Lee Alexander McQueen, CBE was a British fashion designer and couturier. He worked as chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001, and founded his own Alexander McQueen label in 1992. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards, as well as the CFDA's International Designer of the Year award in 2003. McQueen died by suicide in 2010, shortly after the death of his mother. He died at the age of 40, at his home in Mayfair, London.

Abdullah Çatlı was a Turkish secret government agent, as well as a contract killer for the National Intelligence Organization (MİT). He led the Grey Wolves, the youth branch of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), during the 1970s. His death in the Susurluk car crash, while travelling in a car with state officials, revealed the depth of the state's complicity in organized crime in what became known as the Susurluk scandal. He was a hitman for the state, and was involved in the killings of suspected members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA).

Lawrence Lamond Phillips was a professional American football and Canadian football running back. A two-time college football national champion with the Nebraska Cornhuskers, Phillips played in the National Football League for the St. Louis Rams, Miami Dolphins, and San Francisco 49ers from 1996 through 1999, and for the Montreal Alouettes and Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League in 2002 and 2003.

Scott Eugene Fischer was an American mountaineer and mountain guide. He was renowned for his ascents of the world's highest mountains made without the use of supplemental oxygen. Fischer and Wally Berg were the first Americans to summit Lhotse, the world's fourth highest peak. Fischer, Charley Mace, and Ed Viesturs summitted K2 without supplemental oxygen. Fischer first climbed Mount Everest in 1994 and later died during the 1996 blizzard on Everest while descending from the peak.

Carlos Rico Walker, better known as Shawty Lo, was an American rapper, record producer, and executive from Atlanta, Georgia.

Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez was a Chilean teacher, theater director, poet, singer-songwriter and communist political activist tortured and killed during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He developed Chilean theater by directing a broad array of works, ranging from locally produced plays to world classics, as well as the experimental work of playwrights such as Ann Jellicoe. He also played a pivotal role among neo-folkloric musicians who established the Nueva Canción Chilena movement. This led to an uprising of new sounds in popular music during the administration of President Salvador Allende.

Balabhaskar Chandran was an Indian musician, violinist, composer and record producer. He is best known for promoting fusion music in South India. Hailing from a musically affluent family, he was introduced to the world of instrumental music at the age of three by his uncle B. Sasikumar, a laureate in Carnatic music. Balabhaskar began his professional career at the age of 12. He made his debut as a music director by composing the soundtrack for the Malayalam film Mangalya Pallakku (1998), and was the youngest music composer to have worked in the industry at the age of 17. He had won the Bismillah Khan Yuva Sangeetkaar Puraskaar in 2008 by Kendra Sangeet Natak Academy for Instrumental Music (Violin).

Ueli Steck was a Swiss rock climber and mountaineer.

Dawn Therese Brancheau was an American senior animal trainer at SeaWorld. She worked with orcas at SeaWorld Orlando for fifteen years, including a leading role in revamping the Shamu show, and was SeaWorld's poster girl. She was killed by an orca, Tilikum, becoming one of two SeaWorld trainers to be killed by an animal, along with another in Loro Parque in Spain.