List of Famous people who died in 1990

Rafael Banquells was a Cuban-born Mexican actor, director and TV producer known in Mexico as Rafael Banquells (I).

Jacques Demy was a French director, lyricist, and screenwriter. He appeared in the wake of the French New Wave alongside contemporaries like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. Demy's films are celebrated for their visual style. Demy's style drew upon diverse sources such as classic Hollywood musicals, the documentary realism of his French New Wave colleagues, fairy tales, jazz, Japanese manga, and the opera. His films contain overlapping continuity, lush musical scores and motifs like teenage love, labor rights, incest, and the intersection between dreams and reality. He is best known for the two musicals he directed in the mid-1960s: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).

Friedrich Dürrenmatt was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theatre whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophical crime novels, and macabre satire. Dürrenmatt was a member of the Gruppe Olten, a group of left-wing Swiss writers who convened regularly at a restaurant in the city of Olten.

Capucine was a French fashion model and actress known for her comedic roles in The Pink Panther (1963) and What's New Pussycat? (1965). She appeared in 36 films and 17 television productions between 1948 and 1990.

Paulette Goddard was an American actress, a child fashion model and a performer in several Broadway productions as a Ziegfeld Girl; she became a major star of Paramount Pictures in the 1940s. Her most notable films were her first major role, as Charlie Chaplin's leading lady in Modern Times, and Chaplin's subsequent film The Great Dictator. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in So Proudly We Hail! (1943). Her husbands included Charlie Chaplin, Burgess Meredith, and Erich Maria Remarque.

Sir Reginald Carey Harrison, known as Rex Harrison, was an English actor of stage and screen. Harrison began his career on the stage in 1924. He made his West End debut in 1936 appearing in the Terence Rattigan play French Without Tears, in what was his breakthrough role. He won his first Tony Award for his performance as Henry VIII in the play Anne of the Thousand Days in 1949. He won his second Tony for the role of Professor Henry Higgins in the stage production of My Fair Lady in 1957.

Tony Holiday was a German pop and schlager singer and songwriter.

Terry-Thomas was an English comedian and character actor who became known to a worldwide audience through his films during the 1950s and 1960s. He often portrayed disreputable members of the upper classes, especially cads, toffs and bounders, using his distinctive voice; his costume and props tended to include a monocle, waistcoat and cigarette holder. His striking dress sense was set off by a ¹⁄₃-inch (8.5 mm) gap between his two upper front teeth.

Bahriye Üçok was a Turkish academic of theology, left-wing politician, writer, columnist, and women's rights activist whose assassination in 1990 remains unresolved.

State Security General Ivan Alexandrovich Serov was the head of the KGB between March 1954 and December 1958, as well as head of the GRU between 1958 and 1963. He was Deputy Commissar of the NKVD under Lavrentiy Beria, and played a major role in the political intrigues after Joseph Stalin's death. Serov helped establish a variety of secret police forces in Central and Eastern Europe after the construction of the Iron Curtain, and played an important role in crushing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.