List of Famous people who died in 2020
Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bean Bryant was an American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, Bryant helped the Lakers win five NBA championships, and was an 18-time All-Star, a 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, a 12-time member of the All-Defensive Team, the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), and a two-time NBA Finals MVP. Bryant also led the NBA in scoring twice, and ranks fourth on the league's all-time regular season scoring and all-time postseason scoring lists.
Linda Tripp
Linda Rose Tripp was an American civil servant who played a prominent role in the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal of 1998. Tripp's action in secretly recording Monica Lewinsky's confidential phone calls about her relationship with President Bill Clinton caused a sensation with their links to the earlier Clinton v. Jones lawsuit and with the disclosing of intimate details. Tripp claimed that her motives were purely patriotic, and she was able to avoid a wiretap charge in exchange for handing in the tapes. She then claimed that her firing from the Pentagon at the end of the Clinton administration was vindictive, while the administration called it standard procedure for a political appointee. From 2004, Tripp and her husband, Dieter Rausch, owned and ran a year-round holiday store called The Christmas Sleigh in Middleburg, Virginia.
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas was an American actor, producer, director, philanthropist, and writer. After an impoverished childhood with immigrant parents and six sisters, he made his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war films. During his career, he appeared in more than 90 films. Douglas was known for his explosive acting style, which he displayed as a criminal defense attorney in Town Without Pity (1961).
Mark Blum
Mark Blum was an American actor who worked in theater, film and television. Blum found success with a lead role in the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan, which he followed up the next year with a supporting role in Crocodile Dundee. On the stage, he won an Obie Award for his role in the play Gus and Al during its 1988–1989 season.
Pop Smoke
Bashar Barakah Jackson, known professionally as Pop Smoke, was an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. He was considered by many to be the face of Brooklyn drill. Born and raised in Canarsie, Brooklyn, Pop Smoke began his musical career in 2018. He often collaborated with UK drill artists and producers, who employed more minimal and aggressive instrumentation than drill artists from Chicago. Pop Smoke rose to fame with the release of his breakout singles "Welcome to the Party" and "Dior" in 2019.
Kenny Rogers
Kenneth Ray Rogers was an American singer, songwriter, musician, actor, record producer, and entrepreneur. He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2013. Rogers was particularly popular with country audiences but also charted more than 120 hit singles across various music genres, topping the country and pop album charts for more than 200 individual weeks in the United States alone. He sold more than 100 million records worldwide during his lifetime, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. His fame and career spanned multiple genres: jazz, folk, pop, rock, and country. He remade his career and was one of the most successful cross-over artists of all time.
George Floyd
George Perry Floyd Jr. was an African American man killed during an arrest after a store clerk alleged he had passed a counterfeit $20 bill in Minneapolis. Derek Chauvin, one of four police officers who arrived on the scene, knelt on Floyd's neck for a period initially reported to be 8 minutes and 46 seconds. After his death, protests against police brutality, especially toward black people, quickly spread across the United States and internationally.
John Prine
John Edward Prine was an American country folk singer-songwriter. He was active as a composer, recording artist, live performer, and occasional actor from the early 1970s until his death, and was known for an often humorous style of original music that has elements of protest and social commentary.
Colby Cave
Colby Alexander Cave was a Canadian professional ice hockey centre who played 67 games for the Boston Bruins and Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League (NHL) between 2017 and 2020. He also played several seasons with their respective affiliates in the American Hockey League, the Providence Bruins and Bakersfield Condors. Prior to turning professional in 2015 Cave played major junior with the Swift Current Broncos of the Western Hockey League.
Caroline Flack
Caroline Louise Flack was an English television and radio presenter. She began her career as an actress, starring in Bo' Selecta! (2002) and presented various ITV2 shows including I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! NOW! (2009–2010) and The Xtra Factor (2011–2013).