Alien Actors You May Not Know Passed Away

Harry Dean Stantion plays Brett in "Alien," the first crew member of the Nostromo to be killed by the fully grown xenomorph. In a film with some extremely memorable death scenes, his stands out. Expecting to find, at worst, a rabbit-sized monster, he finds a nightmare that could swallow his head with its hand. He looks as if the terror has completely shocked the human emotion out of him, and when the camera cuts away his fate is clear. 

Stanton worked for decades in Hollywood as one of its most recognizable character actors, ready to steal just about any scene. He gives Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner a pair of pants in 2012's "The Avengers," played a corrupt polygamist in HBO's "Big Love," and was a regular in the singular films of David Lynch. 

As reported by the New York Times, Stanton died of heart failure in 2017 at the age of 91. Before his passing, Stanton got the chance to lead his final film — "Lucky," a drama in which he played the titular hero. Logan Sparks — Stanton's friend and co-writer of "Lucky" — told the Independent in 2018 that making "Lucky" both scared Stanton and gave him a sense of peace. Sparks said Stanton knew it would be his last film and that the subject matter of "Lucky," a 90-year-old facing his mortality, sometimes hit a little too close to home.