Larry D. Mann, best remembered for supplying the voice of Yukon Cornelius in the perennial animated holiday favorite Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, died on Monday in Los Angeles of age-related causes according to his son Richard, reports CBS News. He was 91.

Mann’s gruff but endearingly friendly voice of the robustly red-bearded Cornelius remains part of memorable set pieces among a sea of many in the special, as generations of fans fondly remember the character each annual airing. The special originally aired on NBC-TV during the 1965 Christmas Season and set the template for many of the stop-motion “Animagic” (the process of animating figures to create a seamless movement) specials to follow, mostly mired in Christmas themes.

Run Run Shaw (born Shao Yifu) has passed away at the age of 106 in his home in Hong Kong. Shaw will be forever remembered for his movie company, Shaw Brothers Studio, which during its heyday churned out hundreds of movies in literally every genre imaginable from kung fu to musicals, and then some!

Shaw can be seen as partially responsible for the gestation of the Chinese movie and television industry. Shaw got his start in the entertainment industry in the early 1920s with his brother Runme Shaw in Singapore and Shanghai, creating several companies that distributed and produced movies, and late 1920 opened up a series of movie theaters in Malaya that transformed into its own production company. In the late 1960s, Shaw founded Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) which broadcast in Hong Kong, and grew into a television empire that helped launch careers of several now international stars including Chow Yun-Fat and Maggie Cheung.

Some sad news to begin 2014 with. James Avery, a well-known and respected TV and voice actor, has passed away at the age of 68. Avery died on New Year’s Eve in a Los Angeles hospital after a battle with an illness he was struggling to recover from. The actor had open-heart surgery in November just before Thanksgiving, which resulted in weeks of complications.

Avery appeared in numerous TV shows, animated series, video games, movies, and TV movies over the course of his career, but two stand tall above the others. The first is The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, where the actor played Will Smith’s Uncle Phil in 147 episodes of the series. The second is the popular animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series that ran from 1987 to 1996, where he voiced the infamous villain Shredder in 110 episodes.

As 2013 closes, we look back at the talented individuals we lost this year.

The following seven featured individuals contributed to The Walt Disney Company in various capacities, from film and television work (like Annette Funicello), to altering the landscape of Disney history (thanks to you, Diane Disney Miller). We pay our respects and reflect back on these individuals who shaped Disney, many of whom passed away far too young.

Peter O’Toole, the consummate English actor, whose charm and effortless grace endeared him to generations of film audiences, has died in a hospital in London after a long battle with stomach cancer, reports ABC News. He was 81

The actor may best be remembered for his role in Lawrence of Arabia, playing the titular character with a tongue in cheek confidence which netted O’Toole superstardom. He followed that up with with other key characters in The Lion in Winter; the swashbuckling alcoholic charismatic actor who becomes a deer in the headlights as he’s forced to accept performing on 1950’s live television in My Favorite Year; and especially The Stunt Man, in which if Robert De Niro hadn’t turned in an equally dazzling performance that same year in Raging Bull (which won him the Oscar), O’Toole would have netted Academy Gold. In fact, O’Toole never won a Best Actor Oscar Award proper, after being nominated for the Tinseltown prize eight times. In 2003, however, the honorary Oscar was bestowed upon the charismatic actor.