Tom Stoppard was born Tomáš Sträussler in Czechoslovakia, arrived in England at eight after fleeing the Nazis and spending the war in Singapore and India, and became one of the most celebrated writers in the English language. He died on November 29, 2025, at 88, the last of a month that had already taken Jimmy Cliff, Shirley Valentine and the mother of Laura Dern. These are ten of the best-known people who died in November 2025.
1. Donna Jean Godchaux (November 2, aged 78)
Donna Jean Godchaux sang with the Grateful Dead from 1972 to 1979, and before that was a session singer in Muscle Shoals and Memphis, where she sang backing vocals on Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds”. She died of cancer.
2. Diane Ladd (November 3, aged 89)
Diane Ladd was nominated for three Oscars, for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Wild at Heart and Rambling Rose, the last two alongside her daughter, Laura Dern. She died of a lung disease.
3. Dick Cheney (November 3, aged 84)
Dick Cheney was White House chief of staff under Gerald Ford, defence secretary during the 1991 Gulf War and vice president under George W. Bush, when he was one of the main architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He had survived five heart attacks and had a heart transplant in 2012.
4. Pauline Collins (early November, aged 85)
Pauline Collins played Shirley Valentine on stage in London and New York, winning a Tony, and was nominated for an Oscar for the 1989 film. Earlier she had been the maid Sarah in Upstairs, Downstairs. Her family said she had Parkinson’s disease.
5. Sally Kirkland (November 11, aged 84)
Sally Kirkland was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for Anna in 1988 and appeared in more than a hundred films. She died in hospice care.
6. Jill Freud (aged 98)
As a teenager evacuated during the Second World War, Jill Freud stayed with C.S. Lewis, and she is often said to have been an inspiration for Lucy in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She became an actress and ran a summer theatre in Suffolk for decades, and was the widow of Clement Freud.
7. Spencer Lofranco (November 18, aged 33)
The Canadian actor played John Gotti Jr. opposite John Travolta in Gotti and starred in At Middleton.
8. Jimmy Cliff (November 24, aged 81)
Jimmy Cliff starred in The Harder They Come in 1972 and sang its soundtrack, including “Many Rivers to Cross” and “You Can Get It If You Really Want”, which took reggae to the world before Bob Marley’s international fame. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. He died of pneumonia.
9. Skye Gyngell (aged 62)
The Australian-born chef won a Michelin star at Petersham Nurseries in London and later ran the restaurant Spring at Somerset House. She died of skin cancer.
10. Tom Stoppard (November 29, aged 88)
Tom Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Arcadia and The Real Thing, won five Tony Awards for best play and shared the Oscar for the screenplay of Shakespeare in Love. His last play, Leopoldstadt, told the story of his own Jewish family, most of whom had died in the Holocaust, something he had only learned about in his fifties.
Stoppard and Ladd both found late in life the subjects that meant most to them: Stoppard his family’s history, and Ladd the films she made with her daughter.