List of Famous people who died in 2012

James Farentino was an American actor. He appeared in nearly 100 television, film, and stage roles, among them The Final Countdown, Jesus of Nazareth, and Dynasty.

Lina Haag née Jäger was a German anti-Fascist activist.

Jim Drake was an American aeronautics engineer who is credited as the inventor of windsurfing. Patent disputes uncovered earlier designs by Peter Chilvers and Newman Darby such that Drake accepted that he was the third inventor of the concept. He was the engineer who perfected the concepts of board and rig layout and the universal joint which is core to the sport.

Shōichi Ozawa was a Japanese actor, radio host, singer, and prominent researcher and expert on Japanese folk art. He also founded the Shabondama-za theater company.

Ekrem Bora was a Turkish film actor.

Alexander Alekseyevich Sizonenko was a Soviet professional basketball player. Possibly the tallest person to have ever played professional basketball, he was measured by Guinness World Records at 2.39 m and named the world's tallest man in 1991. Sizonenko was said to have grown since this measurement was taken, although age reduced his standing height considerably. Because of his enormous growth, his mobility was increasingly impaired.

Erland Josephson was a Swedish actor and author. He was best known by international audiences for his work in films directed by Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky and Theodoros Angelopoulos.

Dimitra Arliss, sometimes credited as Dimitra Arlys, was an American actress.

Hans Kuhn was a Swiss chemist. He was professor emeritus for physical chemistry and former scientific director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen.

Fritz Hakl was an Austrian actor with the honorary title Kammerschauspieler.