The final films Hollywood stars shot before they died – and why they're so poignant

It's often remarked upon that the art of cinema has the unique power of giving it's stars a form of immortality; that the legacies of Hollywood's most iconic performers can be so strong that they're never truly gone.

That fact often makes watching the final roles of some of our most beloved stars all the more poignant, with the act of observing talented actors giving such spirited performances just months before they passed away becoming a uniquely affecting experience

With that in mind, we've rounded up some of the most affecting final film roles in Hollywood history – from Marilyn Monroe to Chadwick Boseman. Read on to check out our picks.

Marilyn Monroe (and Clark Gable)

Last film role: The Misfits

Much has been written about the tragic circumstances around the death of Marilyn Monroe – who had been filming what was set to be a leading role in screwball comedy Something's Got to Give at the time of her untimely passing.

With that film never completed, this downbeat Western was her final released film, and it contains one of the Golden Age icon's most acclaimed performances. Indeed, speaking during a recent interview with Radio Times, BFI curator Kim Sheehan explained how the film showed "just the tip of the iceberg of what she could have been doing if she'd carried on for a few years".

What makes the film so poignant is that it was also the final film of her co-star – and fellow classic Hollywood icon – Clark Gable, while their co-star Montgomery Clift also passed only five years later aged just 45. As such, it shows a trio of beloved silver screen figures who passed far too soon, still at the top of their acting game in what would prove to be the unfortunate twilight of their careers.

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This drama from John Huston is more of a mausoleum than a movie. The last film of both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, and some might say containing the last real performance by Montgomery Clift, it went from box-office flop to cult status within the space of a year.

Written by Monroe's then husband, Arthur Miller, it's a grey, solemn and at times pretentious piece about three drifters who hunt horses destined to become pet food. Somehow the flat, arid Nevada landscape mirrors the characters' bleak existence and sets the overall mood of despair and depression.

Dogged by various production problems (Monroe's emotional upheavals, Clift's substance abuse, United Artists freezing the budget, Huston's gambling exploits and more), it's a film that's easy to admire – especially for Gable's rugged charm – but so hard to enjoy fully. – Adrian Turner

Oliver Reed

Last film role: Gladiator

Oliver Reed was one of the finest – and most colourful – British actors ever to appear on the big screen, but his heavy-drinking lifestyle was one which frequently got him into trouble. It was while filming Gladiator in Malta in 1999 that Reed – then aged 61 – suffered a fatal heart attack after being challenged to a drinking match by a group of Royal Navy sailors.

Although Reed had struggled with alcohol addiction for much of his life, fellow Gladiator actor Omid Djalili explained that he "hadn't had a drink for months before filming started", while director Ridley Scott also revealed that Reed had promised not to drink during production.

The remainder of Reed's scenes were completed using a body double, and the film's release offered a tragic reminder of just how superb a performer the actor was – ultimately earning him a posthumous BAFTA nomination for best supporting actor.

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Ridley Scott and the boys from DreamWorks produced the first genuine Roman epic since 1964's The Fall of the Roman Empire with this virtual remake that deals with the transition of power from the sage-like Marcus Aurelius to his monstrous son, Commodus.

The fictional hero, General Maximus, is Caesar's adopted heir, whom Commodus turns into an exile after killing his family. Becoming a gladiator, Maximus fights to avenge his loved ones and save the soul of Rome. The film's strengths are a fine script, which doesn't stint on the politics, and excellent performances from Richard Harris as Aurelius and Oliver Reed, in his final film, as a gladiator trainer. Also superb is Joaquin Phoenix as the paranoid, teenage Commodus, while Russell Crowe is utterly convincing as the Conan/Spartacus-like hero.

As always with Scott, the visuals are fabulous: the computer-generated ancient Rome is simply staggering, allowing helicopter shots over the city and turning the Colosseum into a living building, a character in its own right and a blood-soaked stage on which the fate of the characters and the empire is enacted.

For those old enough to remember the 70mm epics of yesteryear, this is a nostalgic synthesis of all of them. For those who haven't seen those earlier movies, Scott will open their eyes to a "brand-new" old world. – Adrian Turner

Brandon Lee

Last film role: The Crow

Few film deaths have received more attention than that of Brandon Lee, who tragically passed away on the set of 1994 superhero film The Crow after he was shot with a prop gun that had not been properly checked before it was fired.

He was pronounced dead six hours later and his mother filed a lawsuit alleging negligence in his death, which was eventually settled under undisclosed terms. Lee – the son of silver screen legend Bruce Lee – had been due to get married just a week after filming was completed.

Naturally given those circumstances, watching The Crow remains an incredibly poignant experience, especially given the film itself deals with the subject of life after death.

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In this dark, surreal version of James O'Barr's 1980s cult comic book, Brandon Lee (son of Bruce) plays a rock musician returning from the grave to take revenge on the notorious street gang who murdered him and his fiancée. It's a stunningly designed fantasy with Grand Guignol gloominess at a jolting premium.

The comic-book origins may be too obvious at times, but the dynamic action scenes and the bravura kinetic style of director Alex Proyas mean it always grips and thoroughly entertains. A masterpiece compared to its lousy sequels, this dark fable about life after death was given a poignant spin when Lee was tragically killed during an on-set stunt accident. – Alan Jones

Diana Rigg

Last film role: Last Night in Soho

Edgar Wright's 2021 film Last Night in Soho is set largely in the swinging 60s, and so it only made sense that he saved three great roles for a trio of the finest British actors from that decade: Terence Stamp, Margaret Nolan and Diana Rigg.

Stamp – who died last summer – will be seen on the big screen posthumously one last time in a sequel to his earlier classic The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. But for the other pair, it was their final film role – with both passing away in 2020 ahead of the film's release and it ultimately being devoted to their memory.

Rigg has an especially great part in the film, with Wright saying that it had been "a beautiful experience" to work with the star of The Avengers, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and later Game of Thrones, while speaking at a press conference for the film in Venice.

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Writer/director Edgar Wright dives into the seamier side of London in this visually arresting psychological thriller, co-written with Krysty Wilson-Cairns. Past and present merge disconcertingly as 1960s-obsessed Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) moves from Cornwall to the capital to study fashion.

After being driven out of student digs, she finds lodgings with the uncompromising Miss Collins (Diana Rigg, in her final performance), where she experiences visions of singer Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) and the man with whom she’s embroiled (Matt Smith). Taking us on an increasingly unsettling trip, Last Night in Soho offers its own spin on traditional horror tropes, where fairy tales become nightmares and misogyny fuels the monsters.

The film is gloriously shot by The Handmaiden’s Chung Chung-hoon, with Odile Dicks-Mireaux providing inspired costume design. The mystery elements feel a tad predictable but McKenzie and Taylor-Joy's performances make up in righteous fury what the film lacks in all-out scares. – Emma Simmonds

Chadwick Boseman

Last film role: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

The outpouring of grief that greeted the incredibly tragic news of Chadwick Boseman's death in 2020 is almost unparalleled in recent times, especially given the fact he had kept his cancer diagnosis private in the months leading up to his death.

The release of his final film just a few months later was therefore especially poignant, especially given it contained one of his very finest turns – one which for a long time looked set to win him a posthumous Oscar for best actor (the award eventually went to Anthony Hopkins for The Father.)

To see further evidence of just how talented a performer he was – and how many more great roles he could have had if not for his illness – made his loss feel all the more devastating.

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The late, great Chadwick Boseman appears on screen for the final time in this fiery take on the August Wilson play about the exploitation of Black musicians. Set in 1920s Chicago during the fraught recording of the titular track, the film sees Viola Davis playing "Mother of the Blues" Ma Rainey.

A diva with a haunted look in her eyes, Ma wields what little power she has to make her white manager (Jeremy Shamos) sweat. Meanwhile, Boseman plays Levee, an ambitious trumpeter in Ma’s band who changes up the musical arrangement and fancies Ma’s girlfriend (Taylour Paige). Sexual, creative and religious tensions surface, alongside the ever-present racial inequality, while tragedies are shared and tempers flare.

The rhythm and fervour of Wilson’s words remain intact (screenwriter Ruben Santiago-Hudson adapts), while director George C Wolfe poignantly conveys the fact that the blues come from a place of suffering. Davis mesmerically balances ego and insecurity, and Boseman gives a kaleidoscopic performance as the charismatic, volatile Levee. While it is heartbreaking to watch, it's a hell of a way to go out. – Emma Simmonds

Peter Finch

Last film role: Network

Few actors have been posthumously awarded Oscars, but the performance Peter Finch gave in 70s American classic Network was extremely well-deserving of the honour – with his news anchor character's on-screen meltdown remaining one of the most electrifying scenes in all of cinema.

Finch had a history of heart problems and reportedly become physically and psychologically exhausted during filming. He eventually suffered a fatal heart attack while promoting the film, just one night after appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

Shortly before his death, Finch told a journalist that he'd liked "to have been more adventurous in my career". It's a real tragedy that he never lived to see the extent of the acclaim that greeted what would turn out to be his most celebrated performance.

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One of the defining American films of the 1970s, this satirical drama from director Sidney Lumet and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky anticipated decades of disquieting developments in news coverage, reality TV and even social media – and it’s damn funny, too.

Peter Finch is unforgettable as Howard Beale, the over-the-hill news anchor who suffers a couple of onscreen breakdowns and is rebranded as the "mad prophet of the airwaves" by network executives desperate to harness his unhinged rants for better ratings.

Equally good are co-stars William Holden, as Beale’s hangdog producer and old pal, and Faye Dunaway, who oozes reptilian confidence as the up-and-coming exec who sees dollar signs when the veteran newsman stalks in and declares, "I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore!"

Famous for its meaty, literate monologues (and its forgivable sense of hectoring), Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning screenplay takes its premise to ingenious extremes as its satirical eye moves beyond news media and targets big business in general: the "holistic system of systems" as one character puts it.

Lumet keeps the pace up throughout his marvellously edited film, with the actors – three of whom won Oscars – doing stellar work, remaining utterly believable even at their most absurd and verbose. – Calum Baker

Judy Garland

Last film role: I Could Go On Singing

Anyone familiar with the story of Judy Garland will know that her life contained a lot of tragedy, and the final years of her life were especially fraught. I Could Go On Singing was released in 1963 – a full six years before she passed – but she would sadly never make another big screen appearance.

While the film itself is generally not regarded as a classic, a great deal of praise has been reserved for Garland's own performance, and there's certainly a degree of poignancy that such a legend of the silver screen could produce such an outstanding turn and yet never again complete production on a film project.

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Judy Garland's last film – originally called The Lonely Stage – was this London-based melodrama attractively shot on location and co-starring the sympathetic Dirk Bogarde.

Most of the movie is very average, pieced together when the star's illnesses made it necessary to finish the project in a hurry, although Garland shines, especially in the numbers actually filmed on the London Palladium stage. The padding, when Garland was unavailable for filming, is all too obvious, hence interminable travelogue shots of London.

However, what this picture does contain is arguably the finest example of improvisational screen acting ever: a single take set in a hospital waiting room where Garland and her character merge in a shattering moment of rare movie honesty. No wonder director Ronald Neame dared not try a second take. – Tony Sloman

Richard Farnsworth

Last film role: The Straight Story

Farnsworth enjoyed a long and successful big screen career, but he saved arguably his best performance for last in David Lynch's most gentle, conventional film – a performance that saw him nominated for an Oscar just a few months before his eventual death from a self-inflicted gunshot (he had been suffering with terminal cancer that had left him in unbearable pain).

The film's subject matter – about an elderly gentleman traveling across the country on a lawnmower, so that he can visit his terminally ill brother (Harry Dean Stanton) before he dies – makes his own death so soon after all the more poignant. It's an incredible film to go out on.

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Following the excesses of Lost Highway, David Lynch is in mellower mood with this whimsical road movie that, nevertheless, slyly dissects middle-American mores with disarming precision.

Exhibiting dignified self-assurance, Richard Farnsworth gives an Oscar-nominated performance as the Iowa farmer travelling by lawnmower to visit his dying brother in Wisconsin. There's selfless support from Sissy Spacek as his traumatised daughter as well as some memorable turns from the various eccentrics he meets en route.

It's hard to imagine a gentler film, yet Lynch fully exploits the stately pace to gaze fondly upon life's rich pageant. He also slips in a crane shot of such monumental inconsequence that it borders on the brilliant. – David Parkinson

Carole Lombard

Last film role: To Be or Not To Be

Lombard was one of the finest comic actors of her generation, and so her tragic death in a plane crash at the age of just 33 was met with a huge degree of shock and grief.

The film – which reportedly had a line removed that coincidentally made reference to an air disaster – was one of the finest showcases of Lombard's impeccable comedic talents, and a tragic reminder of how many more great performances she could have given had disaster not struck.

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"So they call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt?". There's taste, and there's this fabulously funny and original wartime comedy from director Ernst Lubitsch, which transcends taste. Witty and cleverly satirical by turns, this movie avoids giving offence by its magnificent casting, with Jack Benny as "that great, great actor Joseph Tura" and the wonderful comedian Carole Lombard, in her final film, released after her untimely death in a plane crash.

Don't miss the opening, a hysterical gag concerning Hitler (I warned you about taste). There's poignancy, too, and a terrific running joke involving Lombard's admirer, played by the young Robert Stack. Mel Brooks audaciously remade this story and achieved almost as many laughs, but the immutable style of this classic original proved impossible to re-create. – Tony Sloman

Spencer Tracy

Last film role: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Spencer Tracey appeared in numerous films alongside fellow Hollywood icon Katherine Hepburn (with whom he also had a long-term off-screen relationship) and the chemistry they shared is legendary – so it's naturally a poignant affair to watch the pair appear together on screen one last time, a decade on from their previous collaboration.

Tracy – who had battled addiction for much of his adult life – died at the age of 67 shortly after production on the film was completed, with Hepburn herself discovering his body after he suffered a fatal heart attack.

Later, Hepburn recalled: "He looked so happy to be done with living, which for all his accomplishments had been a frightful burden for him."

Meanwhile, after she won her second best actress award for the role, she declared that she felt the award was not just for her but was also given to honour Tracy.

RT Review:

It has been said that Spencer Tracy treated Katharine Hepburn more harshly than schmaltzy legend might suggest. However, you would not guess it from this, their last movie together, in which the alliance works to dovetailing perfection.

They're a rich couple whose liberal principles are tested by the proposed marriage of their daughter to a black doctor. As he is Sidney Poitier, all intellectual politesse, there's never any doubt about the outcome.

The film may have a foregone conclusion, but it's worth watching as the acting is so good. Tracy and an Oscar-winning Hepburn were a deceptively rare cinema double-act, who seemed genuinely fond of each other both on and off screen. – Tom Hutchison

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