Died at 92
male
Gene Wilder (born Jerome Silberman; June 11, 1933 – August 29, 2016) was an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer, singer-songwriter, and author. He began his career on stage, and made his screen debut in an episode of the TV series The Play of the Week in 1961. Although his first film role was portraying a hostage in the 1967 motion picture Bonnie and Clyde, Wilder's first major role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1967 film The Producers for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. This was the first in a series of collaborations with writer/director Mel Brooks, including 1974's Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, which Wilder co-wrote, garnering the pair an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. He is known for his iconic portrayal of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) and for his four films with Richard Pryor: Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989), and Another You (1991), as well as starring in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972). He directed and wrote several of his own films, including The Woman in Red (1984). With his third wife, Gilda Radner, he starred in three films, the last two of which he also directed. Her 1989 death from ovarian cancer led to his active involvement in promoting cancer awareness and treatment, helping found the Gilda Radner Ovarian Cancer Detection Center in Los Angeles and co-founding Gilda's Club. After his last acting performance in 2003 – a guest role on Will & Grace for which he received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor – he turned his attention to writing. He produced a memoir in 2005, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art; a collection of stories, What Is This Thing Called Love? (2010); and the novels My French Whore (2007), The Woman Who Wouldn't (2008), and Something to Remember You By (2013).
Gene Wilder
Willy Wonka
for Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Suggested by sinon
11-year-old Charlie Bucket lives in poverty in a small house with his parents and four grandparents. His grandparents share the only bed in the house, located in the only bedroom. Charlie and his parents sleep on mattresses on the floor. One day, Grandpa Joe tells him about the legendary and eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka and all the wonderful candies he made until the other candymakers sent in spies to steal his secret recipes, which led him to close the factory to outsiders. The next day, the newspaper announces that Wonka is reopening the factory and has invited five children to come on a tour, after they find a Golden Ticket in a Wonka Bar. Each ticket find is a media sensation and each finder becomes a celebrity. The first four golden tickets are found by the gluttonous Augustus Gloop, the spoiled and petulant Veruca Salt, the gum-addicted Violet Beauregarde, and the TV-obsessed Mike Teavee. One day, Charlie sees a fifty-pence coin (dollar bill in the US version) buried in the snow. He buys a Wonka Bar and finds the fifth and final golden ticket. The ticket says he can bring one or two family members with him and Charlie's parents decide to allow Grandpa Joe to go with him. Wonka takes the kids and their parents go inside where they meet Oompa-Loompas, a race of small people who help him operate the factory since he rescued them from poverty and fear in their home country Loompaland. The other kids are ejected from the tour in comical, mysterious and painful ways, befitting their various greedy characters and personalities. Augustus gets sucked up a pipe after falling into the Chocolate River in the Chocolate Room, Violet inflates into a giant blueberry after sampling an experimental three-course chewing gum meal of tomato soup, roast beef and blueberry pie in the Inventing Room, Veruca is thrown down the rubbish chute in the Nut Room after she tries stealing a nut-testing squirrel and they consider her a "bad nut", and Mike gets shrunk after he tries to be the first person to be sent by television in the Television Room's Television Chocolate Technology, during each elimination, the Oompa-Loompas sang a morality song about them. With only Charlie remaining, Wonka congratulates him for "winning" the factory and, after explaining his true age and the reason behind his Golden Tickets, names Charlie his successor. They ride the Great Glass Elevator to Charlie's house while the other four children go home (Augustus squeezed thin, Violet all blue in the face, Veruca covered in trash, and Mike stretched ten feet tall). Afterwards, Wonka invites Charlie's family to come live with him in the factory.
