List of Famous people who died at 85

Pauline Diana Baynes was an English illustrator, author and commercial artist. She contributed drawings and paintings to more than two hundred books, mostly in the children's genre. She was the first illustrator of some of J. R. R. Tolkien's minor works and of C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.

The hallmarks of her work were a talent for lively, imaginative designs; the ability to create a sense of energy and animation; a confident fluidity of line; a bold use of vibrant, gem-like colours and the subtle employment of negative space.

Kihachirō Kawamoto was a Japanese puppet designer and maker, independent film director, screenwriter and animator and president of the Japan Animation Association from 1989, succeeding founder Osamu Tezuka, until his own death. He is best-remembered in Japan as designer of the puppets for the long-running NHK live action television series of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the early 1980s and The Tale of the Heike in the 1990s but better-known internationally for his own animated short films, the majority of which are model animation but which also include the cutout animation Tabi and Shijin no Shōgai and mixed media, French-language Farce anthropo-cynique.

Sir Edward Thomas ("Ted") Downes, CBE was an English conductor, specialising in opera.

Helen Cherry was an English stage, film and television actress. She was born in Worsley, Lancashire, and brought up in Harrogate, West Riding of Yorkshire.

Michel Brault, OQ was a Canadian cinematographer, cameraman, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He was a leading figure of Direct Cinema, characteristic of the French branch of the National Film Board of Canada in the 1960s. Brault was a pioneer of the hand-held camera aesthetic.