List of Famous people who died in 2000

Sandra Marie Schmirler, was a Canadian curler who captured three Canadian Curling Championships and three World Curling Championships. Schmirler also skipped (captained) her Canadian team to a gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics, the first year women's curling was a medal sport. At tournaments where she was not competing, Schmirler sometimes worked as a commentator for CBC Sports, which popularized her nickname "Schmirler the Curler" and claimed she was the only person who had a name that rhymed with the sport she played. She died in 2000 at 36 of cancer, leaving a legacy that extended outside of curling. Schmirler was honoured posthumously with an induction into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame and was awarded the World Curling Freytag Award, which later led to her induction into the World Curling Federation Hall of Fame.

Sydney Cassyd was the founder of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Jacqueline Auriol was a French aviator who set several world speed records.

Willy Harlander (1931–2000) was a German film and television actor. A regular on West German television, he also appeared in several Bavarian sex comedies during the 1970s.

Loyd Jowers was the owner of Jim's Grill, a restaurant near the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. In 1993, Jowers appeared on the ABC News program Prime Time Live and related the details of an alleged conspiracy involving the Mafia and the U.S. government to kill the civil rights leader. According to Jowers, the alleged assassin, James Earl Ray, was a scapegoat, and was not the only person responsible for assassinating King. Instead, Jowers said that he hired Memphis police Lieutenant Earl Clark to fire the fatal shot. A Memphis civil trial in 1999 supported this claim. In 2000, the United States Department of Justice released a 150-page report denying allegations that there was a conspiracy to assassinate King.

Seiroku Kajiyama was a Japanese politician who served in the House of Representatives from 1969 to 1976 and from 1979 to 2000, as Secretary-General of the Liberal Democratic Party from 1992 to 1993, and as Chief Cabinet Secretary from 1996 to 1998.

Randolph Apperson Hearst was the fourth and last surviving son of the five sons of William Randolph Hearst and Millicent Hearst. His twin brother, David, died in 1986. Randolph is the father of Patty Hearst.

Elvera Sanchez was an American dancer and the mother of Sammy Davis Jr.

Enver Şimşek was a Turkish-born businessman in Germany who was the first victim of the series of murders by the National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist group. The owner of a flower shop in Schlüchtern in Hesse, he was gunned down on 9 September 2000 at a mobile flower stand in Nuremberg. Two days later he died in a hospital as a result of injuries sustained in the attack.

Rolf Römer (1935–2000) was a German stage, television and film actor. Römer was a prominent actor of East Germany, appearing in a number of DEFA productions.