List of Famous people who died at 78

Beverly Eileen Michaels was an American B-movie actress and cheesecake model of the 1950s.

Yoshitada Konoike was a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party and member of the House of Councillors in the Diet, formerly Minister of State for Disaster Mnagement. A native of Amagasaki, Hyōgo and graduate of Waseda University, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1986 after an unsuccessful run in 1983. After losing his seat in 1993, he was elected to the House of Councillors for the first time in 1995 and is currently serving his fourth 6-year term.

William Ferdie Brown was an American professional football player, coach, and executive. He played as a cornerback for the Denver Broncos and the Oakland Raiders in the National Football League (NFL). Following his playing career, Brown remained with the Raiders as an assistant coach. He served as the head football coach at California State University, Long Beach in 1991, the final season before the school's football program was terminated. Brown was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a player in 1984. At the time of his death he was on the Raiders' administrative staff.

Barry Frederick Howard was an English actor. He was best known for his role as Barry Stuart-Hargreaves in the first seven series of the long-running BBC sitcom Hi-de-Hi!, in which his deadpan comedy style and classic facial expressions made him a popular character.

Roger Robinson was an American actor who won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for the 2009 revival of Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

Gary Douglas Kurtz was an American film producer whose list of credits includes American Graffiti (1973), Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), The Dark Crystal (1982) and Return to Oz (1985). Kurtz also co-produced the 1989 science fiction adventure film Slipstream, which reunited him with Star Wars star Mark Hamill.

Helmut Horten was a German entrepreneur who built up and owned the fourth-largest chain of department stores in Germany: the Horten AG.

Hannu Olavi Mikkola was a Finnish world champion rally driver. He was a seven-time winner of the 1000 Lakes Rally in Finland and won the RAC Rally in Great Britain four times.

Jackie Sardou was a French actress.

Fatima-Zohra Imalayen, known by her pen name Assia Djebar, was an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker. Most of her works deal with obstacles faced by women, and she is noted for her feminist stance. She is "frequently associated with women's writing movements, her novels are clearly focused on the creation of a genealogy of Algerian women, and her political stance is virulently anti-patriarchal as much as it is anti-colonial." Djebar is considered to be one of North Africa's pre-eminent and most influential writers. She was elected to the Académie française on 16 June 2005, the first writer from the Maghreb to achieve such recognition. For the entire body of her work she was awarded the 1996 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. She was often named as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.