List of Famous people who died at 85

Willie D. Davis was an American professional football player who was a defensive end in the National Football League (NFL). Davis played college football for the Grambling State Tigers before being drafted 181st in the 1956 NFL Draft. He spent 12 seasons in the NFL, playing for the Cleveland Browns and the Green Bay Packers.

Odette Joyeux was a French actress, playwright and novelist.

Roger Perry was an American film and television actor whose career began in the late 1950s. He served as an intelligence officer in the United States Air Force during the early 1950s.

Challakere Kareem Jaffer Sharief was an Indian politician. He was one of the senior most Indian National Congress leaders. He was the Railways Minister of the Government of India from 1991 until 1995.

Stephen Owen Davies was a Welsh miner, trade union official and Labour Party politician, who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Merthyr Tydfil from 1950 to 1972, and previously Merthyr from 1934 to 1950. In 1970, when well past 80, he was deselected as parliamentary candidate by his local party association on account of his age. He fought the constituency in the 1970 general election as an Independent and won comfortably, a rare example in British politics of an independent candidate defeating a major party's organisation. In a BBC TV interview the day after that election, he claimed to be 83 years old.

André Obrecht was the official executioner of France from 1951 until 1976.

Habib Tanvir was one of the most popular Indian Urdu, Hindi playwrights, a theatre director, poet and actor. He was the writer of plays such as, Agra Bazar (1954) and Charandas Chor (1975). A pioneer in Urdu and Hindi theatre, he was most known for his work with Chhattisgarhi tribals, at the Naya Theatre, a theatre company he founded in 1959 in Bhopal. He went on to include indigenous performance forms such as nacha, to create not only a new theatrical language, but also milestones such as Charandas Chor, Gaon ka Naam Sasural, Mor Naam Damad and Kamdeo ka Apna Basant Ritu ka Sapna.

Vernon Daurice Jarrett was an African-American journalist who worked in newspaper, television and radio and was an influential commentator on race relations, politics, and African-American history.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, was a German-born British and American Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant.

Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Manstein was a German commander of the Wehrmacht, Nazi Germany's armed forces during the Second World War. He attained the rank of field marshal.