List of Famous people who died in 1981

Reinhold Bernt was a German film actor.

Mohammad-Javad Bahonar was a Shia Iranian theologian and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Iran for less than one month in August 1981. Bahonar and other members of Mohammad-Ali Rajai's government were assassinated by Mujahideen-e Khalq.

Bernard B. Brown was an American sound engineer and composer, who wrote the scores for many early animated cartoons produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions for distribution by Warner Bros. Pictures. He won an Academy Award in the category Sound Recording and was nominated for seven more in the same category. He was also nominated three times in the category Best Visual Effects. He worked on more than 520 films between 1930 and 1958.

Erich Fiedler was a German film actor. He was the German dubbing voice of Robert Morley.

Suehiro Nishio was a Japanese labor activist and party politician whose career extended across the prewar and postwar periods. A long-serving member of the National Diet, he was a power broker in the Japan Socialist Party and one of the main leaders of the Right Socialists. He served as Deputy Prime Minister of Japan during the cabinet of Hitoshi Ashida, and in January 1960, he led a breakaway faction out of the Japan Socialist Party to found the new Democratic Socialist Party.