List of Famous people who died in 1988

Heather Michele O'Rourke was an American child actress. She made her debut after being discovered by director Steven Spielberg while visiting MGM studios. Spielberg promptly cast her in the horror film Poltergeist (1982) as Carol Anne Freeling, and O'Rourke earned recognition for her performance. She then reprised the role in the second and third installments. O'Rourke was also recognized for her work in television, and appeared in recurring roles on Happy Days from 1982 to 1983, on Webster in 1983, as well as appearing in the television-film Surviving in 1985.

Judith Eva Barsi was an American child actress of the 1980s. She began her career in television, making appearances in commercials and television series as well as in the film Jaws: The Revenge. She provided voices for animated characters in The Land Before Time and All Dogs Go to Heaven. She and her mother, Maria, were killed in July 1988 in a double murder–suicide perpetrated in their home by her father, József Barsi.

Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer, songwriter, and musician known for his impassioned singing style, complex song structures, and dark, emotional ballads. His music was described by critics as operatic, earning him the nicknames "the Caruso of Rock" and "the Big O". Many of Orbison's songs conveyed vulnerability at a time when most male rock-and-roll performers chose to project defiant masculinity. He was known for his shyness and stage fright, which he countered by wearing dark sunglasses.

Jessie Buckley is an Irish actress and singer. Her career began in 2008 as a contestant on the BBC TV talent show I'd Do Anything in which she placed second. In the same year she appeared in the West End revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, from which she graduated in 2013. Buckley's early onscreen appearances include roles for BBC television series: Marya Bolkonskaya in the 2016 adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (2016), Lorna Bow in Taboo (2017) and Marian Halcombe in The Woman in White (2018).

Valery Alekseyevich Legasov was a Soviet inorganic chemist and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He is now mainly remembered for his work as the chief of the commission investigating the Chernobyl disaster.

Raj Kapoor was an Indian film actor, producer and director of Indian cinema. He is widely regarded as the greatest showman in the history of Indian cinema and entertainment. He received multiple accolades, including three National Film Awards and 11 Filmfare Awards in India. The Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award is named after Kapoor. He was a two-time nominee for the Palme d'Or grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his films Awaara (1951) and Boot Polish (1954). His performance in Awaara was ranked as one of the top ten greatest performances of all time by Time magazine. His films attracted worldwide audiences, particularly in Asia and Europe.

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was an English composer, music critic, pianist and writer whose music, written over a period of seventy years, ranges from sets of miniatures to works lasting several hours. One of the most prolific 20th-century composers, he is best known for his piano pieces, notably nocturnes such as Gulistān and Villa Tasca, and large-scale, technically intricate compositions, which include seven symphonies for piano solo, four toccatas, Sequentia cyclica and 100 Transcendental Studies. He felt alienated from English society by reason of his homosexuality and mixed ancestry, and had a lifelong tendency to seclusion.

Kurt Georg Kiesinger was a German politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1 December 1966 to 21 October 1969. Before he became Chancellor he served as Minister President of Baden-Württemberg from 1958 to 1966 and as President of the Federal Council from 1962 to 1963. He was Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union from 1967 to 1971.

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of SAMO, a graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s, where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop music culture. By the early 1980s, his neo-expressionist paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. At 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist to ever take part in documenta in Kassel. At 22, he was the youngest to exhibit at the Whitney Biennial in New York. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his art in 1992.

Anthony Provenzano, also known as Tony Pro, was a caporegime of the Genovese crime family New Jersey faction. Provenzano was known for his associations with Teamsters Union director Jimmy Hoffa due to Provenzano's job as an International Brotherhood of Teamsters president for Local 560 in Union City, New Jersey.