Famous personalities who died in 2014
PUBLISHED ONDecember 17, 2014 4:20 AM
PARIS - From Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Robin Williams, here are some of the notable figures who died in the year just ending:
January
Former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon in hospital near Tel Aviv, 85, after eight years in a coma.
Italian conductor Claudio Abbado, 80, in Bologna, after a long illness.
US folk singer Pete Seeger, 94, at the New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Oscar-winning Austrian actor Maximilian Schell, 83, after a sudden illness.
February
Oscar-winning US actor Philip Seymour Hoffman in his New York apartment of a drug overdose, 46.
Shirley Temple Black, the iconic American child star of the 1930s, 85, in her Californian home.
Spanish flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia in Mexico of a heart attack, 66.
March
Belgian avant-garde opera director Gerard Mortier at home in Brussels, 70, after battling cancer.
Sierra Leone's former wartime president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, 82, at his Freetown home.
April
Veteran US actor Mickey Rooney, 93, after a long illness.
Peaches Geldof, the socialite daughter of Band Aid founder Bob Geldof, at her home in Britain, 25, of a heroin overdose.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel-winning Colombian author, 87, at home in Mexico City.
Win Tin, one of the founders of Myanmar's pro-democracy opposition, 84, in hospital in Yangon.
British actor Bob Hoskins, 71, in hospital following a bout of pneumonia.
May
General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland's last communist leader, 90, in a Warsaw hospital.
Celebrated African-American author, poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou in her home in North Carolina, 86.
June
Tommy Ramone, born Tamas Erdelyi in Budapest and the last original member of punk band The Ramones, of cancer in New York at the age of 65.
July
Alfred Di Stefano, the Real Madrid legend regarded as one of the greatest footballers of all time, aged 88.
Former Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze who helped end the Cold War as the Soviet Union's last foreign minister, 86, after a long illness.
US conductor and composer Lorin Maazel, 84, at his Virginia home from pneumonia.
South African Nobel Prize-winning writer and anti-apartheid activist Nadine Gordimer, 90, at home in Johannesburg.
US blues legend Johnny Winter, 70, in a hotel near Zurich.
August
US Oscar-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams of suicide at his home in California, aged 63.
Legendary US actress Lauren Bacall, 89, after suffering a stroke at her home in New York.
American photo journalist James Foley, 40, the first of a series of westerners to be beheaded by Islamic State jihadists in Syria and Iraq.
Richard Attenborough, British actor, producer and director, aged 90 after a long illness.
September
Japanese actress and singer Yoshiko "Shirley" Yamaguchi, 94, of heart failure at her home in Tokyo.
Ian Paisley, the former Northern Irish first minister and firebrand Protestant leader, 88, after a long illness.
October
Haiti's former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, of a heart attack, 63.
Total oil boss Christophe de Margerie, 63, in a plane crash in Moscow.
Zambian President Michael Sata, 77, in London where he was receiving medical treatment.
November
French gypsy guitarist, Manitas de Plata, 93, in a retirement home in the south of France.
Mike Nichols, the Oscar-winning US film director, 83, of cardiac arrest.
Spain's Duchess of Alba, who had more titles than any other aristocrat on earth, in her Seville palace, 88, after pneumonia.
Famed Lebanese singer and actress Sabah, 87, in the hotel where she lived outside Beirut.
Australian cricket batsman, Phillip Hughes, 25, from injuries sustained when he was hit by a ball in a domestic game in Sydney.
British detective writer P. D. James, at home in Oxford at the age of 94.
December
Queen Fabiola of Belgium, 86, widow of King Baudouin, after a long illness.