List of Famous people who died at 81

Pedro Knight Caraballo was a Cuban musician, and the husband and manager of singer Celia Cruz.

Roy Senior Barraclough was an English comic actor. He was best known for his role as Alec Gilroy, the devious, mournful landlord of the Rovers Return in the long-running British TV soap Coronation Street, and for the double-act Cissie and Ada with comedian Les Dawson.

Begum Para was an Indian Hindi film actress who was active mostly in the 1940s and 1950s. After 50 years, she returned to films with her last role in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Saawariya (2007) as Sonam Kapoor's grandmother. In her times in 1950s, she was considered a glamour girl of Bollywood, so much so, that Life magazine had a special session with her devoted to her fine sensuous photographs.

Mathunny Mathews was an Indian, a resident in Kuwait and was one of the people credited with the safe airlift evacuation of about 170,000 Indians from Kuwait during the 1990 Invasion of Kuwait, which is hailed as the world's largest civilian evacuation in history.

Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, was an English author and playwright.

Vijaya Raje Scindia, born Lekha Divyeshwari Devi and known popularly as the Rajmata of Gwalior, was a prominent Indian political personality. In the days of the British Raj, as consort of the last ruling Maharaja of Gwalior, Jivajirao Scindia, she ranked among the highest royal figures of the land. In later life, she became a politician of considerable influence and was elected repeatedly to both houses of the Indian parliament. She was also an active member, for many decades, of the Jana Sangh and co-founder of Bharatiya Janata Party.

Thomas William Lester was an American actor and evangelist. He was best known for his role as farmhand Eb Dawson on the television show Green Acres. He appeared in two feature animal films, Gordy and Benji.

Katsura Utamaru was a Japanese rakugo comedian best known for hosting the Shōten comedy show on Nippon TV. He is known as a master of the Japanese comic art of rakugo, in which a single performer or storyteller appears on stage and tells comedic stories to the audience.

Beate Uhse-Rotermund was a German pilot, entrepreneur and sex pioneer. She was one of the very few female stunt pilots in Germany in the 1930s, during World War II she ferried planes for the German Luftwaffe and after World War II she started the first sex shop in the world. The company she started, Beate Uhse AG, is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

Erdal İnönü was a Turkish theoretical physicist and politician, who served as the interim Prime Minister of Turkey between 16 May and 25 June 1993. He also served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey from 1991 to 1993 and as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from March to October 1995. He served as the leader of the Social Democracy Party (SODEP) from 1983 to 1985 and later the Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP) from 1986 to 1993. He was the son of the 2nd President of Turkey, İsmet İnönü.