The Chilling Connection Between All These Stars Who Died Young
A couple of all-time hip hop greats somehow seemed to know that they weren't long for this world. And they're not the only young stars whose professional work eerily reflected their real life struggles.
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00:00A couple of all-time hip-hop greats somehow seemed to know that they weren't long for
00:04this world, and they're not the only young stars whose professional work eerily reflected
00:09their real-life struggles.
00:11When Heath Ledger died of an accidental overdose in 2008 at the age of 28, much of the lore
00:16around his tragic passing focused on his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight.
00:21The actor made no secret of the freedom he had been given to make the part his own, as
00:25he openly discussed the psychological depths he plumbed to embody this iconic nihilist.
00:31But The Dark Knight wasn't Ledger's final film.
00:34At the time of his death, he was playing the lead role of Tony in The Imaginarium of Dr.
00:39Parnassus.
00:40Keen to ensure Ledger's final role made it to the screen, director Terry Gilliam decided
00:45that Tony could be played by multiple actors in addition to Ledger, with the character's
00:49look changing each time he passed through a magic mirror.
00:52The finished film includes multiple references to death, which Gilliam insists were already
00:57in the script before Ledger's demise.
01:00As he explained to Last Broadcast,
01:02"...they all thought we had written this stuff after Heath had died, and no, we didn't change
01:07any of the words.
01:08And that to me is what's so kind of scary and spooky.
01:12Why was it so prescient?
01:13It seemed to be all about death.
01:15It's so much of it."
01:16The film world was in deep mourning in February 2014, when Philip Seymour Hoffman died of
01:21a drug overdose at the age of 46 in his apartment in Greenwich Village, New York.
01:26Initial reports were sketchy.
01:28Some people speculated that Hoffman had been the victim of a deadly batch of heroin.
01:32It later emerged that he had multiple drugs in his system, including heroin.
01:36Hoffman had been open about his struggles with drug addiction and alcoholism, and although
01:40he went through periods of sobriety, an addiction to prescription drugs unfortunately led him
01:44to return to heroin.
01:46A year before his death, he had checked himself into a rehab clinic.
01:50In the wake of the tragic news, several observers noted how addiction had featured in several
01:54of Hoffman's most acclaimed roles.
01:56Perhaps the most notable example was the 2007 thriller Before the Devil Knows You're Dead,
02:02in which he played an addict whose heroin use forces him to turn to a life of crime.
02:06"...everything just went wrong."
02:08Brandon Lee was the son of martial arts icon Bruce Lee, and he was on the verge of becoming
02:12a superstar himself when he died during a tragic accident at the age of 28.
02:17He had just landed the title role in The Crow, a supernatural tale about a resurrected superhero.
02:23The movie was filmed entirely at night, a creative decision that delayed production
02:27and caused accidents.
02:28The worst of them happened on March 31, 1993, when Lee was killed in a tragic accident by
02:34a prop gun.
02:36Bruce Lee had also died tragically young at the age of 32, having fallen into a coma after
02:41taking a prescription painkiller.
02:43Following Brandon's death, rumor had it that there was a curse on the Lee family, which
02:47was only fueled further by the dark subject matter of The Crow.
02:51Brandon's sad fate pretty much ensured that The Crow would become a cult classic, with
02:55fans embracing it to keep his memory alive.
02:58Paul Walker was one of the most exciting young actors of the 2000s, thanks mainly to his
03:02leading role in the Fast and Furious franchise.
03:06Alongside his co-star Vin Diesel, he became a hero to car-loving moviegoers everywhere.
03:10His on-screen charm was only increased by the fact that he was just as much of a gearhead
03:14in real life as he was on screen, but that real-life connection turned tragic on November
03:1930, 2013.
03:21Walker was in the passenger seat of a car driven by his friend Roger Rodas, who lost
03:25control of the vehicle and collided with a tree.
03:28The impact and the resulting fire contributed to both of their deaths.
03:32Walker was only 40 years old.
03:34At the time of his death, Walker had been busy filming Furious 7.
03:38After complete production, his two brothers were brought in as stand-ins.
03:42The movie continued the franchise's immense box office success, as it grossed over $1
03:46billion worldwide.
03:48But seeing Walker pulling off dangerous stunts on screen was no doubt unsettling for many
03:53viewers in the wake of his real-life passing.
03:54Hey, I thought you could leave without saying goodbye."
03:59Before there was Mean Girls, there was Heathers, the 1989 black comedy about high school alienation
04:04and premeditated murder.
04:06It starred Winona Ryder and Christian Slater as a couple resisting the cruel social power
04:11of a trio of popular girls all named Heather.
04:14The movie is famous for its withering put-downs and caustic one-liners, but it also contains
04:18a cruel foreshadowing of the tragic death of one of its stars.
04:22Kim Walker played the trio's leader, Heather Chandler.
04:25The most brutal of the popular girls, she's eventually killed after drinking poison, but
04:29not before delivering some of the movie's most memorable lines.
04:33Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?"
04:35Sadly, that line now exists with a dose of tragic irony, as Walker herself died of a
04:40brain tumor in 2001.
04:42She was only 32.
04:44The tragic final years of Amy Winehouse's life were like a slow-motion car crash for
04:49her fans, who saw her deteriorate visibly as the strains of fame took hold.
04:53Pursued mercilessly by the tabloid press, Winehouse became known more for her alcoholism
04:58and drug use than her music.
05:00In July 2011, she was found dead in her London apartment from alcohol poisoning.
05:05She was only 27.
05:07Winehouse's addiction issues certainly didn't come out of nowhere.
05:10In fact, her breakout single, Rehab, outlined exactly how she chose to resist treatment
05:14for the sake of her career.
05:16As her manager Nick Schimansky explained to The Independent, the song mirrored real-life
05:20discussions about her health that were occurring among her team just as she was gaining international
05:25fame, but which were sadly derailed by those around her.
05:28Rehab was released in October 2006, ahead of Winehouse's Grammy-winning sophomore album
05:34Back to Black, and it now sounds horribly prescient in the wake of her passing.
05:38That's not least because of the mention of her father, Mitch, who has become something
05:42of a villain among her fans.
05:45Emerging on the scene in the 1960s, Mark Bolan is another influential British musician who
05:50died tragically young.
05:51He was a trailblazer of the glam rock movement as the frontman of the band T-Rex, whose work
05:56has continued to reverberate in multiple genres decades later.
06:00"...What is magic is the power of the human being to relate to another human being."
06:05Alas, Bolan wouldn't be around to witness so many of his successors, as he was killed
06:09in a car crash on September 16, 1977, at the age of 29.
06:14But even though he didn't make it to 30, he had already amassed a sprawling discography,
06:18including 10 Top 10 British Singles.
06:21T-Rex wasn't quite as successful in the United States, although the band's 1971 song Get
06:26It On was an undeniable hit on both sides of the pond.
06:29Underneath all that glam fun, some fans of Bolan's believe that there is a song in his
06:33catalog that appears to predict his death.
06:36In the 1972 T-Rex single, Solid Gold Easy Action, there's a lyric that goes,
06:41"...life is the same, and it always will be, easy as picking foxes from a tree."
06:46Eerily enough, there are some details surrounding Bolan's death that match up uncomfortably
06:51with those lyrics, as his car struck a tree and bore the license plate number FOX-661-L.
06:58Death was a central subject in the work of seminal 90s rapper Christopher Wallace, a.k.a.
07:03The Notorious B.I.G., a.k.a. Biggie Smalls.
07:07Before breaking big, Biggie lived a precarious life as a drug dealer, the dangers of which
07:11were writ large in his lyrics.
07:13When he was still a teenager, he was arrested for illegally possessing a firearm, with the
07:17threat of gang violence seemingly never far away.
07:20His music outlined other threats as well, which was plenty clear in the song Suicidal
07:24Thoughts, the final track of his debut album, Ready to Die.
07:28So when Biggie died young, it didn't feel like it came out of nowhere, although it was
07:32still shocking.
07:33On March 9, 1997, he was leaving a party in Los Angeles when he was shot to death.
07:39He was only 24.
07:40As of 2024, the case remains unsolved.
07:43The incident happened after rising tensions between Biggie, an East Coast rapper, and
07:48his former friend and bitter rival Tupac Shakur, a West Coast star who was killed the
07:53previous year.
07:54Biggie's death also happened a couple of weeks before the release of his sophomore album,
07:58Life After Death.
08:00In retrospect, both titles seemed to uncannily predict the untimely demise of a rising star.
08:07The murder of 25-year-old Tupac Shakur on September 13, 1996, was the highest-profile
08:13death in a coastal feud that had engulfed the hip-hop world after the rise of gangsta
08:17rap.
08:18Shakur first made his name as a member of the alternative rap group Digital Underground,
08:22but then he undertook a radical change in style, embracing what he termed Thug Life,
08:27which he embodied both in his records and acting roles.
08:30Who is Thug Life?
08:31This is the original.
08:32We are the original Thugs."
08:35Some critics argued that Shakur's music glamorized the gangsta lifestyle, but his lyrics showed
08:40he was conscious of its dangers, with numerous songs featuring him mulling over premonitions
08:44of his untimely death.
08:46In Only God Can Judge Me, for example, he imagines himself on a hospital bed, dying
08:51of bullet wounds.
08:52Meanwhile, the music video for the single I Ain't Mad At Cha features a white-suited
08:57Shakur rapping in the back of a vehicle before ascending to heaven, strangely mirroring his
09:02actual death in a drive-by shooting.
09:05The tale of James Murray is one of the most tragic and disturbing in the history of early
09:09cinema.
09:10He was born in New York City to Irish immigrants and then worked as a doorman in a film extra
09:14before being spotted by director King Vidor, who cast him in his 1928 film The Crowd.
09:20Murray played starry-eyed Johnny Sims, a young man looking for opportunities in New York
09:25during the Great Depression.
09:26Experiencing poverty, death, and marital strife, his life spins out of control and he ends
09:32up close to destitution and considering suicide.
09:35Though The Crowd deals with heavy themes, studio executives insisted that it must have
09:39a happy ending, so the Sims family eventually settles into a content, though unexceptional,
09:45life.
09:46Offscreen, though, Murray wasn't quite so fortunate.
09:48He continued to act after The Crowd, but in later years he drank heavily.
09:53He was eventually seen begging on the streets by none other than Vidor, whom Murray cursed
09:57when Vidor offered to put him in another film.
10:00Murray's rock bottom proved to be as tragic as that of Johnny Sims.
10:04Or even worse, really.
10:06He died after performing for a group of fellow drinkers and then falling into the Hudson
10:10River and drowning.
10:12Nirvana were the kings of the 90s grunge explosion.
10:15Frontman Kurt Cobain was an artist strikingly concerned with authenticity, which flavored
10:20both his music and his pronouncements about the state of the music industry and the world
10:24in general.
10:25Cobain was also open about his mental health issues, which were in turn related to chronic
10:29pain that he experienced for many years as a result of a stomach ailment.
10:33He admitted to having suicidal ideation as a result of the pain, so he began to self-medicate,
10:39which led to an addiction to heroin.
10:41He revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone towards the end of his life that pain underpinned
10:45much of his songwriting, which was plenty clear in the multiple Nirvana songs that referenced
10:50suicide.
10:51One of the darkest titles in the Nirvana catalog is a demo called I Hate Myself and Want to
10:56Die, which was recorded during sessions for the band's final studio album, In Utero, which
11:00was released in September 1993.
11:03I Hate Myself and Want to Die was also the working title for that album, which makes
11:07the connection to Cobain's ultimate fate even more tragic, as he killed himself in April
11:121994 at the age of 27.
11:15If you or anyone you know is struggling or in crisis, call or text 988 or chat 988Lifeline.org.