These Famous People Died In 2022 And Nobody Noticed

It can sometimes feel like famous people — entertainers, politicians, thinkers, artists, influencers, athletes — are immortal. After all, they've risen above the vast swaths of humanity in some way, elevated by their cultural or social contributions, seemingly immune to the frailties and missteps that curse the rest of us. And beyond that, their works, both popular and important ones, can live on forever. But alas, celebrities are people, too, and people die — regardless of their status or what they accomplished in their limited time on this Earth.

When a celebrity dies, it usually makes headlines around the world, because we as humanity collectively mourn our best and most notable. The year 2022 was particularly brutal and monumental in terms of the deaths of famous people — in this annum, we lost some of the most iconic figures of our time, such as Queen Elizabeth II, Jerry Lee Lewis, Angela Lansbury, Loretta Lynn, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Russell, and Olivia Newton-John. Those deaths were so major that they overshadowed the demise of other beloved and important people. Here are celebrities who died in 2022, but whose deaths were met with little media fanfare.

One of the most influential and progressive filmmakers to ever work in cinema, Jean-Luc Godard elevated and revolutionized his medium in the mid-20th century, influencing the way movies are made in Europe and Hollywood for the next few generations, as reported by The New York Times. Godard began his career as an outspoken critic for the 1950s magazine Cahiers du Cinema, which influenced that era's young movie-makers to take risks and be more provocative with style and form.

In 1960, Godard's first feature, "Breathless," heralded a new school that French culture writers deemed la Nouvelle Vague, or the New Wave. Big on emotional realism, striking imagery, politics, and deconstruction, Godard also popularized the jump cut and made it palatable for mainstream movies to explore the darker side of the human experience. Among the many acclaimed films of Godard include "Pierrot le Fou," "Contempt," "Every Man for Himself," and "Alphaville."

After experiencing a severe decline in health and a number of issues, Godard died at his home in Rolle, Switzerland, according to his attorney, Patrick Jeanneret. "He could not live like you and me, so he decided with a great lucidity, as he had all his life, to say, 'Now, it's enough,'" Jeanneret told the Times. Godard arranged for an assisted suicide and died at the age of 91.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ by dialing 988 or by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

As the internet democratized and opened up content distribution in the 2000s, a handful of writers who operated weblogs, or "blogs," became famous and earned huge, devoted followings for their personal and specific musings. One of these writers was Julie Powell, who was the writer behind the popular and inspiring blog the Julie/Julia Project for Salon.com, per The New York Times. 

Through her blog project, which later turned into a bestselling book (via NPR), Powell spent a year preparing and then writing about every recipe featured in Julia Child's towering tome "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Powell's 2005 book adaptation served as the source material for the 2009 film "Julie and Julia," in which Amy Adams portrayed Powell as she taught herself to cook and became a better writer. Powell's second book caused scandal and generated headlines, as "Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession" was a memoir and meditation on the author's sexual proclivities.

On November 1, 2022, the Times published word from Powell's husband, Eric Powell, that the home cook, writer and blogging pioneer had died on October 26 at her home in Olivebridge, New York. Powell experienced cardiac arrest and died at age 49.

According to The New York Times, Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh's journey as a religious and philosophical leader and activist began in earnest in the 1960s, when he studied and lectured at multiple Ivy League schools, and his staunch and aggressive peace advocacy helped inspire the anti-Vietnam War movement.

Thích Nhất Hạnh was considered for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, nominated by his close ally, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also founded the relief organization Youth for Social Services to assist individuals displaced or injured by the Vietnam War and put his pro-peace sentiments and tenets of what he called "engaged Buddhism" to paper starting in the 1960s, eventually publishing numerous bestselling volumes of poetry and philosophical analysis. He founded several monasteries and Buddhism centers around the world while traveling the lecture circuit, returning to Vietnam in the 2000s after a ban by the communist government was finally lifted.

Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism, Thích Nhất Hạnh's organization of Buddhist monasteries, announced on its founder's Twitter that the spiritual leader had died at midnight on January 22, 2022, at the Từ Hiếu Temple in Hue, Vietnam. After enduring a debilitating brain hemorrhage and stroke in 2014, he died at the age of 95.

The 1950s and 1960s were lousy with young, handsome guys who could sing a few songs and charm moviegoers. But among the likes of that first generation of rock n' roll-era teen idols who sent hearts racing as their tunes climbed the charts and TV and movie appearances attracted millions of fans, it wasn't Elvis Presley or Ricky Nelson who served as the namesake of the ultimate '50s nostalgia trip — it was Bobby Rydell (as in Rydell High, the setting of the musical "Grease," according to NBC News).

The clean-cut, big-voiced Rydell scored 34 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart between 1959 and 1965, including "We Got Love," "Wild One," "Volare," "Sway," and "Forget Him." When the British Invasion occurred and the Beatles arrived, the star of Rydell and other singers like him dimmed considerably, but at the tail end of his peak era, Rydell co-starred as lovelorn teen Hugo in the 1963 film version of "Bye Bye Birdie," a musical about early rock n' roll teen idols like him, per The Telegraph.

According to The Washington Post, Bobby Rydell's spokesperson Maria Novey related that the singer and actor had died in a hospital in Abington, Pennsylvania, on April 5, 2022, after suffering from a bout of pneumonia. Rydell was 79 years old.

In 1981, "Chariots of Fire" became an unlikely box office hit and winner of the Academy Award for best picture, the story of two friends grappling with their deeply held religious views on their journey to running for England in the 1924 Olympics. The scenes of athletes triumphantly running in slow-motion to a soaring, synthesizer-based score became often imitated in real life and in movies, always accompanied by that iconic, familiar music — composed and performed by Greek-born New Age musician Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, who performed under the mononym Vangelis. A self-taught piano wiz, according to NPR, Vangelis played with the prog-rock group Aphrodite's Child before striking out on his own. His instrumental main theme from "Chariots of Fire" went to No. 1 on the pop chart, and won Vangelis an Oscar.

Vangelis' assistant, Lefteris Zermas, told NPR that the composer and keyboardist died on May 17, 2022, at a Paris hospital. Vangelis died from complications surrounding heart failure at the age of 79.

A significant and important person in the history of stand-up comedy, Budd Friedman wasn't a comic or a writer. He was a producer, a businessperson, and a club owner, and he gave so many stand-ups their big breaks, stage time, and exposure that he helped a pop cultural shift take place, which in turn made him a famous and notable figure.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Friedman opened The Improvisation in New York City in 1963, one of the first ever nightspots devoted to stand-up comedy performance. In 1975, he would expand with an Improv in Hollywood (the first of 21 branches), a launchpad to success for most major comedians of the late-20th century, including Richard Lewis, Freddie Prinze, Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Larry David, and Jay Leno. The Improv inspired a nationwide comedy club boom, which died out in the 1980s with the arrival of cable TV, a new medium that could frequently and cheaply program stand-up comedy, such as A&E's "An Evening at the Improv," shot at the Hollywood Improv, and frequently hosted by Friedman over its 1981 to 1994 run.

The Hollywood Improv announced on its Twitter account on November 12, 2022, that Friedman had died. According to Variety, the cause of death was heart failure. Friedman was 90 years old.