List of Famous people who died in 2004

Louis Georges Gustave de Caunes, professionally known as Georges de Caunes, was a well-known French television and radio presenter, journalist, writer and producer whose career spanned over six decades in French language television and radio.

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen was a Portuguese poet and writer. Her remains have been entombed in the National Pantheon since 2014.

Archibald Cox Jr. was an American lawyer and law professor who served as U.S. Solicitor General under President John F. Kennedy and as a special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal. During his career, he was a pioneering expert on labor law and was also an authority on constitutional law. The Journal of Legal Studies has identified Cox as one of the most cited legal scholars of the 20th century.

Claude Nougaro was a French songwriter and singer.

Gregorio Jesús Gil y Gil was a Spanish businessman and politician. He served as Mayor of Marbella between 1991 and 2002, and presided for a 16-year tenure as president of the Spanish football club Atlético Madrid.

Forrest Silva "Woody" Tucker was an American career criminal first imprisoned at age 15 who spent the rest of his life in and out of jail. He is best known as an escape artist, having escaped from prison "18 times successfully and 12 times unsuccessfully", by his own reckoning. The 2018 film The Old Man & the Gun, starring Robert Redford as Tucker, is based on his life.

Ronald Keith Williamson was a former minor league baseball catcher/pitcher who was one of two men wrongly convicted in 1988 in Oklahoma for the rape and murder of Debra Sue "Debbie" Carter. His friend Dennis Fritz was sentenced to life imprisonment, while Williamson was sentenced to death. Both were released 11 years later when DNA evidence proved their innocence. Their story became the subject of bestselling author John Grisham's first nonfiction book, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, and the adapted Netflix docu-series of the same name.

Evelyn Ntoko Mase, later named Evelyn Rakeepile, was a South African nurse. She was the first wife of the anti-apartheid activist and the future president Nelson Mandela, to whom she was married from 1944 to 1958.

Theodoor "Theo" van Gogh was a Dutch director and film and television producer, actor and author. He directed "Submission: Part 1", a short film written by Somali writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which criticized the treatment of women in Islam in strong terms. On 2 November 2004, Van Gogh was assassinated by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Islamist who objected to the film's controversial message. The last film Van Gogh had completed before his death, 06/05, was a fictional exploration of the assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn (1948–2002). It was released posthumously in December 2004, a month after Van Gogh's assassination.

Serge Reggiani was an Italian-French singer and actor. He was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy and moved to France with his parents at the age of eight.