Celebrities We Lost in 2013

"The Young and the Restless" matriarch Jeanne Cooper, who appeared on the daytime soap for nearly 40 years, died on May 8. She was 84 and had battled a prolonged illness that had her in and out of the hospital. The California native got her start in movies, co-starring with the likes of Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda, Frank Sinatra, and Jon Voight. However, it will be her role on daytime television, playing Katherine Chancellor, for which she will be ... more 

"The Young and the Restless" matriarch Jeanne Cooper, who appeared on the daytime soap for nearly 40 years, died on May 8. She was 84 and had battled a prolonged illness that had her in and out of the hospital. The California native got her start in movies, co-starring with the likes of Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda, Frank Sinatra, and Jon Voight. However, it will be her role on daytime television, playing Katherine Chancellor, for which she will be best remembered. She joined the cast in 1973, just months after the soap debuted – and never looked back. After being awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2004 Daytime Emmys, she went on to win the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series award in 2008. One of her most memorable story arcs on the show was in the 1980s when she turned her real-life plastic surgery into TV drama, filming the procedure for the show. In 2012, she discussed it on "The Talk," saying (with her trademark humor) that she pitched the storyline because "I walked by a mirror one day and scared the hell out of myself." Cooper also received two Primetime Emmy nominations, including one for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series when she played her real-life son Corbin Bernsen's mother on "L.A. Law." Bernsen was the one who shared the news of Cooper's passing, saying, "While her light finally gave into the wind that gives flight to all our journeys, there will always be a glimmer left behind by what she stood for." less