Top 10 Posthumous Film Roles

In honor of Bernie Mac's last performance, in Soul Men, TIME looks back at the most memorable posthumous movie performances of all time.

Natalie Wood in Brainstorm

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A hard-working actress for decades — she first appeared as the little girl in Miracle on 34th Street before going on to star in Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story — Natalie Wood died at the age of 43. On Nov. 29, 1981, she drowned after falling off a boat near Catalina Island, Calif. Wood, husband Robert Wagner and actor Christopher Walken had retired to the yacht Splendour after a large dinner and many glasses of wine. Wood and Walken were in the middle of filming the sci-fi flick Brainstorm, about a machine that gives people the ability to experience others' pre-recorded emotions. Production on the film, directed by Close Encounters of the Third Kind visual effects maven Douglas Trumbull, was halted for over a year before its release in 1983.

See TIME's 1981 story on the last hours of Natalie Wood

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