Among those who died in 2021...

landlady in TV’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show, died Jan. 27, age 94.

Cicely Tyson, stage, screen, and TV actress who helped shatter racial stereotypes in the 1970s by delivering a string of electrifying portrayals of resilient African-American women, died Jan. 28, age 96.

Christopher Plummer, Shakespearean actor who played Capt. Georg von Trapp in The Sound of Music, died Feb. 5, age 91.

Richard Donner, prolific Hollywood director who helmed some of the most popular movies of the 1970s and ’80s, including The Omen, Superman, and Lethal Weapon, died July 5, age 91.

Jackie Mason, ex-rabbi turned comic who made kvetching into comedy gold, died July 24, age 93.

Ed Asner, actor and political activist who played the coarse but idealistic newsman Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, died Aug. 29, age 91.

Jean-Paul Belmondo, actor who became the face of French New Wave cinema after being cast as a flippant, amoral gangster in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film Breathless, died Sept. 6, age 88.

Michael K. Williams, dancer turned actor who won acclaim for his portrayal of Omar Little, a gangland Robin Hood in HBO’s The Wire, died Sept. 6, age 54.

Jane Powell, sunny actress and singer who lit up golden-age musicals including Royal Wedding and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, died Sept. 16, age 92.

Melvin Van Peebles, fiercely independent filmmaker, playwright, and composer, who rewrote the rules of Black cinema with 1971’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, died Sept. 21, age 89.

Dean Stockwell, reluctant child star who became an offbeat character actor in later life, playing a menacing drug dealer in Blue Velvet and the wisecracking Adm. Al Calavicci in the hit sci-fi TV series Quantum Leap, died Nov. 7, age 85.

Stephen Sondheim, Broadway composer and lyricist who reinvented American musical theater with works such as West Side Story, Company, and Into the Woods, died Nov. 26, age 91.