Every year, the ABC publishes many obituaries of celebrities and public figures.

Obituaries do more than pay tribute to those who have died — they're an opportunity to look back at a life well lived and the creativity that has driven them.

From actors and designers to a Holocaust survivor and a broadcaster, these men and women made their mark.

Let's take a look back at some of the people we lost in 2025.

David Lynch

David Lynch died aged 78. (Reuters: Jean-Paul Pelissier)

David Lynch, the American painter turned filmmaker who specialised in surreal, noir-style mysteries, died in January, aged 78.

Lynch was known for his innovative filmmaking, featuring visually stunning, disturbing and inscrutable works filled with dream sequences and bizarre images.

After making his debut with the experimental feature Eraserhead in 1977, Lynch went on to release a string of award-winning films, including Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990) and Mulholland Drive (2001), as well as the network TV series Twin Peaks, which first aired in 1990.

He also practised transcendental meditation, setting up the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace in 2005; painted; made music and released albums; delivered weather reports via YouTube; and opened a nightclub in Paris in 2011.

Steven Spielberg, who cast Lynch as director John Ford in his 2022 film The Fabelmans, said in a statement: "The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice. Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Elephant Man defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade."

Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull died, aged 78, in January. (Reuters: File image)

Marianne Faithfull, who died, aged 78 in January, released more than 20 albums, including Broken English, which earned a Grammy nomination.

Singer Nick Cave, with whom she collaborated, said the world had lost "not just a fiercely unique talent, but the stored knowledge of a generation".

Faithfull has been ranked 173 on Rolling Stone magazine's 200 list of the greatest singers of all time.

Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, with whom she had a relationship in the 60s, said she would always be remembered.

"She was a wonderful friend, a beautiful singer and a great actress," Jagger said at the time.

The couple were a well-known part of the Swinging London scene, attending parties, including one at Keith Richards's house, where she was famously found wearing nothing but a fur rug by police executing a drug raid.

She later spoke about dealing with her drug and alcohol issues in the public eye.

"It destroyed me. To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother."

A decade later, Faithfull made Broken English, her most critically acclaimed album.

Gene Hackman

Gene Hackman died aged 95. (AP Photo/Mark J Terrill)

Actor Gene Hackman, who died in February, aged 95, was prolific, acting in about 80 films, many of which he says he took for the money, once describing himself as "an actor, not a star". He was Hollywood's regular Everyman and joked he looked like "your everyday mine worker".

Hackman won his first Oscar in 1971 for his portrayal of detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection, and his second for playing the Sheriff Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood's 1992 Western drama, Unforgiven.

He also earned acclaim for his role in Bonnie and Clyde, Mississippi Burning and The Posideon Adventures.

Even after he had heart surgery in 1990, he stayed prolific, starring in The Mexican with Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, and in Wes Anderson's film The Royal Tenenbaums.

Hackman and his wife, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, were found dead in separate rooms in their New Mexico home on February 26.

Richard Norton

Richard Norton died aged 75. (ABC RN: Fiona Pepper)

Australian actor, stuntman and choreographer Richard Norton died, aged 75, in March.

Born in Sydney in 1950, Norton studied martial arts as a child, training in judo and karate before working as a security guard.

He ran fitness and training sessions for his security clients, who included ABBA, the Rolling Stones and James Taylor.

Norton became a master in Muay Thai, aikido and Brazilian jujitsu.

He was friends with Chuck Norris, with whom he later worked on in films as a fight choreographer.

Kerry Greenwood

Kerry Greenwood died in March, aged 70. (Supplied: Allen & Unwin)

Australian author, criminal lawyer and playwright Kerry Greenwood died, aged 70, in March.

Greenwood was known for her Phryne Fisher murder mystery novels about a 1920s amateur detective. The first Miss Fisher novel, Cocaine Blues, spawned a hit ABC television show, which starred Essie Davis.

In 2020, Greenwood was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to literature.

Pope Francis

Pope Francis waving from the popemobile as he arrives to hold a mass in Romania in 2019. (Reuters: Remo Casilli)

Pope Francis, known as a liberal reformer in the Catholic Church, died in April, aged 88.

Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina in 1936, he was the son of Italian immigrants.

Francis's ascension to the papacy in 2013 brought several firsts: he was the first pope from the Americas, a Jesuit, and the only non-European pope since the 8th century.

In his final public appearance, on Easter Sunday, he called for freedom of thought and tolerance.

Richard Zachariah

Richard Zacharia was a journalist, author and hosted The Home Show on the ABC in the 90s. (ABC)

Australian television and radio broadcaster Richard Zachariah died in April. He was 80.

Zachariah's long career in journalism spanned The Age, The BBC, The Sunday Australian and the ABC, where he presented The Home Show with his partner at the time, Maggie Tabberer.

Zachariah also wrote a memoir and a book about Victoria's Western District — the place he had loved since his childhood and where he was laid to rest.

Yvonne Engelman

Yvonne Engelman died in May aged 98. (Supplied: Sydney Jewish Museum)

The founding member of Sydney Jewish Museum and a survivor of the Holocaust, Yvonne Engelman lived to be 98.

Born in 1927 in what was then Czechoslovakia, Engelman and her parents were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. On their way to the concentration camp, she recalls her father saying: "You have to promise me one thing: that you will survive." I said, "Of course I will survive."

Engelman emigrated to Australia shortly after the war, where she married fellow Holocaust survivor John Engelman in Sydney in 1949.

She is remembered by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren as someone who always fought for what is right.

Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson (centre) with members of the Beach Boys in 2012. (Reuters: Mario Anzuoni, file)

Brian Wilson, the singer who co-created the Beach Boys, was remembered as a prodigious songwriter and pop visionary when he died in June. He was 82.

Wilson's arrangements included Good Vibrations, California Girls and other sun-kissed anthems that became synonymous with his native Los Angeles.

Despite the sunny vibes expressed in his music, Wilson experienced lifelong struggles with mental illness and addiction.

In 2004, Wilson re-emerged with the release of Smile, finishing an album the Beach Boys abandoned in 1967 — it is widely regarded as his masterpiece.

John Shakespeare

For 39 years, newspaper cartoonist John Shakespeare brought humour and whimsy to the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said of Shakespeare's "remarkable work": "[He] can be incisive without being cutting … [his] cartoons are generous, they show people's character…"

Shortly after retiring, he died of cancer aged 63. His colleagues remembered him as "big-hearted and generous".

Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy Osbourne, pictured here in 2007, died in July aged 76. (Reuters: Fredrik Sandberg/file)

Ozzy Osbourne, a heavy metal music pioneer and reality television star, died in July aged 76.

The lead singer of Black Sabbath, Osbourne is credited with having invented heavy metal. The band released their self-titled debut album in 1970.

Osbourne was fired from the group in 1979, having missed a concert after falling asleep in a hotel room (he had become dependent on drugs and alcohol). He went solo shortly after, and went on to release 13 studio albums, with 2022's Patient Number 9 his last.

The singer was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame first as a member of Black Sabbath in 2006, and then again as a solo artist in 2024.

He also starred in the reality MTV series The Osbournes, which ran for four seasons from 2022, portraying the home life of Ozzy, his wife Sharon and their teenage children, Jack and Kelly.

In an interview with Esquire magazine in 2008, Osbourne, who famously bit the head off a bat at a concert in Iowa in 1982, said he knew what would be on his tombstone: "Here lies Ozzy Osbourne, the ex-Black Sabbath singer who bit the head off a bat."

Hulk Hogan

Hulk Hogan died aged 71. (Reuters: Jeenah Moon)

Hulk Hogan, the moustachioed, bandana-wearing icon of professional wrestling who helped turn the sport into a multi-billion-dollar industry, died in July aged 71.

Hogan, whose real name was Terry Gene Bollea, was perhaps the biggest star in World Wrestling Entertainment's history.

He was the main draw for the first WrestleMania in 1985, and was a fixture of the event for years, facing other famous competitors including André the Giant, Randy Savage and The Rock.

He also starred in the films No Holds Barred (1989) and Mr Nanny (1993), and in the TV series Thunder in Paradise.

Julian McMahon

Julian McMahon died aged 56. (Reuters: Danny Moloshok)

Australian actor Julian McMahon died in July, aged 56.

McMahon's death was announced by his wife, Kelly, who revealed he had been battling cancer.

"Julian loved life. He loved his family. He loved his friends. He loved his work, and he loved his fans. His deepest wish was to bring joy into as many lives as possible," she said.

McMahon was one of three children of the former Australian prime minister Sir William "Billy" McMahon and Lady Sonia McMahon.

He began his career as a model, starring in a series of Levi's jeans commercials before moving into acting — he had a guest spot on Rafferty's Rules and roles in the Aussie soap operas The Power, The Passion and Home and Away.

McMahon appeared in several other American TV shows, including Nip/Tuck, Charmed, and FBI: Most Wanted, and films including Fantastic Four and its sequel.

David Stratton

David Stratton died aged 85. (Peter Tarasiuk)

David Stratton, the celebrated film critic and festival director best known for his on-screen partnership with Margaret Pomeranz, died in August aged 85.

Stratton moved from England to Australia in 1963 and was appointed director of the Sydney Film Festival in 1966, a position he held for almost two decades.

He began hosting The Movie Show alongside Margaret Pomeranz on SBS in 1984, with the duo becoming a fixture of Australian film culture. In 2004, they moved to the ABC, where they hosted At The Movies with Margaret and David until 2014.

But he was perhaps most proud of his lifelong fight against film censorship. In 2020, he criticised the Melbourne International Film Festival for what he called its "shameful and unforgivable" decision to remove a film from its line-up after concerns were raised by psychologists.

"If, in the future, the government wants to censor a festival film, the festival will no longer be in a position to protest; they've done it to themselves," he said at the time.

Writing after his death, the ABC's Virginia Trioli said: "He would probably dislike the term, but David Stratton was a true public intellectual. He unapologetically spoke up to his audience.

"Film is, by definition, a popular art, and to be successful must remain so: a film projected to a crowded theatre is its own reward. David's mission was to ensure that as many people as possible heard of that director, sat in that theatre, noted that cinematographer, heard that soundtrack and was transported and maybe even changed by the experience, as he was."

Giorgio Armani

Giorgio Armani, pictured here in January 2025, died in September aged 91. (AFP: Julien De Rosa)

Giorgio Armani, the Italian fashion designer who built a global fashion empire, died in September aged 91.

Dubbed a master of the power suit and "King of the Blazer", Armani was best known for pioneering the concept of soft power dressing. Adapting a custom of traditional Neapolitan tailors, he removed the lining and shoulder pads from the traditional men's suit to create a looser, longer cut piece that became instantly popular.

He applied the same techniques to his womenswear, using elegant fabrics like crepe and cashmere in muted colour palettes.

The Armani brand became an international icon in 1980 when the actor Richard Gere appeared in the film American Gigolo wearing Armani suits and knit ties (though Diane Keaton made a splash in 1978 when she accepted her Oscar for Annie Hall wearing a Giorgio Armani outfit featuring a tailored double-breasted jacket).

Armani's philosophy, he consistently said, was to help men and women feel comfortable and confident in their clothes.

"My entire style was created to celebrate people's personalities, without confining them in uncomfortable or excessive clothes," he said in a 2022 interview with Perfect magazine.

"I would like to be remembered as someone who had the courage to look beyond the immediate scope of his actions to imagine something that did not exist, someone who responded to a need he sensed in society by offering tools that allowed people to express themselves to the fullest."

Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk died aged 31. (Reuters: Cheney Orr)

Charlie Kirk, an American right-wing activist whose political organising and speaking tours helped guide many young people to vote for Donald Trump in 2024, was killed in September aged 31.

Kirk, who was a friend of the president, died after being shot while speaking to a crowd of about 3,000 people at a university campus in Utah.

His assassination was quickly labelled as yet another horrific act in a wave of political violence in the US, with news outlets including The New York Times condemning Kirk's killing.

Kirk was 18 when he founded Turning Point USA in 2012, his conservative answer to progressive political platforms like MoveOn.org. He caught the attention of Trump and his family, who welcomed Kirk as an ally, though rankled many with his inflammatory and sometimes derogatory remarks about Jewish, black and LGBTQ people, and issues like abortion, which he compared to the Holocaust.

Turning Point USA grew fast, expanding to more than 850 campus chapters which hosted conservative speakers and well-attended conferences that focused on issues like race, immigration and economics.

A skilled public speaker and debater, Kirk thrived at college events at which he encouraged students to challenge his views. He was killed during his "American Comeback" tour, while sitting beneath a sign that read "Prove me wrong".

Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall died aged 91. (AP: Markus Schreiber)

Jane Goodall, the renowned conservationist and pioneer of groundbreaking chimpanzee research, died in October aged 91.

Goodall came to public attention in 1963, when National Geographic published her 7,500-word article about the lives of primates she had observed in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve, in what is now Tanzania.

Her discoveries — about how wild chimpanzees raised their young, socialised and communicated — earned her much respect and admiration from other researchers.

She was the first researcher to record the creation and use of tools by animals, leading Louis Leakey, a paleoanthropologist and Goodall's mentor, to famously remark: "Now we must redefine 'tool', redefine 'man', or accept chimpanzees as humans."

Goodall got to know the chimps she studied, and even gave them names. For hours, she watched them kissing, embracing, patting, shaking their fists, throwing rocks and using tools and weapons to hunt other animals.

"I was very shocked when I realised chimpanzees had a dark side to their nature. I thought they were like us but nicer," she told ABC Catalyst in 2016.

Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977, which became one of the biggest non-profit global research and conservation organisations in the world.

She also wrote 32 books. In her last, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times, published in 2021, she shared her optimism about the future of humankind — a message she toured the world to spread.

"Hope isn't just wishful thinking," Goodall said in a 2024 interview with The New York Times, telling the reporter to imagine a long, dark tunnel with a little star at the end representing hope.

"There's no good sitting at the mouth of the tunnel and wishing that hope would come to us," she said. "We've got to roll up our sleeves. The Bible says, gird your loins. I love that. I'm not quite sure what it means, but let's gird our loins. And we've got to climb over, crawl under, work around all the obstacles that lie between us and the star."

Diane Keaton

Diane Keaton died aged 79. (AP: Willy Sanjuan/Invision/File)

Diane Keaton, the Oscar-winning actor who starred in more than 100 film and television roles, died in October aged 79.

Keaton was 31 when she was cast as the title character in Woody Allen's autobiographical romantic comedy Annie Hall (1977), about a "nervous romance" between a New York comic and an ambitious but insecure woman from the Midwest. Her performance earned her the 1978 Academy Award for best actress, with the Hollywood Reporter describing her as "the consummate actress of our generation".

She went on to receive Oscar nominations for her turns in Reds (1981), Marvin's Room (1996), and Something's Gotta Give (2003), but was also beloved in iconic films including The Godfather trilogy, Father of the Bride (1991) and The First Wives Club (1996).

Keaton was also hailed as a style icon; The New York Times' chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman wrote that her love of men's suiting, turtlenecks, layers, and accessories like bowler hats, belts and glasses was "as much a part of her legacy as her indelible roles in Annie Hall … and Reds".

Keaton was also a director, writer, producer and photographer, and was passionate about restoring Californian mansions.

She detailed her life in two memoirs — Then Again, in 2011, in which she revealed she had suffered from the eating disorder bulimia in her 20s, and Let's Just Say it Wasn't Pretty, in 2014.

John Laws

John Laws died aged 90. (AAP: Dean Lewins)

Veteran broadcaster John Laws, one of the most-recognisable voices on Australian talkback radio, died in November aged 90.

After landing his first job in radio at 3BO in Bendigo in 1953, Laws spent 71 years on air, including at Sydney's 2UE and 2SM, before retiring in November 2024.

He interviewed 17 prime ministers, and in 2003 was inducted into The Commercial Radio Hall of Fame to recognise his decades on the airwaves.

"Laws was wildly entertaining. And that's the reason he lasted on Australian radio for about 70 years and why no other Australian broadcaster has come near his longevity or success," the ABC's Leigh Sales wrote after his death.

Still, his career was not without controversy, with the "cash-for-comment" inquiry in 1999 noting Laws's failure to disclose his paid sponsorships. The same year, he was found guilty of contempt of court for soliciting information from a juror after a murder trial.

And in 2004, the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal ruled that comments made by Laws and fellow radio commentator Steve Price on 2UE in 2003 were capable of inciting severe ridicule of gay men.

About 800 people attended his state funeral at St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney.

Bob Starkie

Bob Starkie died aged 73. (ABC: Supplied Bob Starkie's Skyhooks show)

Bob "Bongo" Starkie, guitarist for the Australian rock band Skyhooks, died in November aged 73.

Starkie joined Skyhooks in 1973, replacing his older brother Peter on guitar.

The Melbourne band were known for their flamboyant make-up, costumes and songs, which referenced Melbourne place names, Australian culture and themes like drugs, sex and the gay scene.

Their debut album Living in the Seventies sold 226,000 copies, and sat atop the Australian charts for many months in 1975, while their song You Just Like Me 'Cos I'm Good In Bed was played during 2JJ's (later triple j's) first ever broadcast on January 19, 1975.

The group split up and reunited several times again, and were inducted into the Aria Hall of Fame in 1992.

In August, Starkie told Noise 11 that his illness had forced him to cancel several live shows planned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Skyhooks' second album, Ego Is Not A Dirty Word.