GLENDA JACKSON

A representative for the Directors Guild of America said his family informed the organization that he passed Thursday, Jan. 7, 2021. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)Michael Apted, the acclaimed British director of the “Up” documentary series and films as diverse as the Loretta Lynn biopic “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and the James Bond film “The World Is Not Enough,” has died. A representative for the Directors Guild of America said his family informed the organization that he passed Thursday night. Apted served as a researcher on the first film and took over as director seven years later, continuing to check in with the subjects every seven years. “The series was an attempt to do a long view of English society,” Apted told Slant Magazine in 2019.

LOS ANGELES Acclaimed actress Glenda Jackson will launch the 50th season of PBS Masterpiece drama showcase next year. The film Elizabeth is Missing, with Jackson as a woman in search of a vanished friend even as she copes with dementia, will air Jan. 3. It's based on the Emma Healey novel of the same name. Jackson, 84, is a two-time Oscar winner, for Women in Love and A Touch of Class." A 1970s adaptation of Herriots work was a public TV hit.

FILE - In this Dec. 10, 2014 file photo, playwright Larry Kramer attends Acria's 19th Annual Holiday Dinner Benefit in New York. (Photo by Donald Traill/Invision/AP, File)NEW YORK Larry Kramer, the playwright whose angry voice and pen raised theatergoers consciousness about AIDS and roused thousands to militant protests in the early years of the epidemic, has died at 84. Bill Goldstein, a writer who was working on a biography of Kramer, confirmed the news to The Associated Press. Kramer's husband, David Webster, told The New York Times that Kramer died of pneumonia on Wednesday. But for many years he was best known for his public fight to secure medical treatment, acceptance and civil rights for people with AIDS.

FILE - This May 12, 2014 file photo shows playwright Larry Kramer at the premiere of HBO Films' "The Normal Heart" in New York. Kramer, the playwright whose angry voice and pen raised theatergoers consciousness about AIDS and roused thousands to militant protests in the early years of the epidemic, died Wednesday, May 27, 2020 in Manhattan of pneumonia. Please know that AIDS is a worldwide plague. Kramer, whose angry voice and pen raised consciousness about AIDS and roused thousands to action, died Wednesday at 84. As support for AIDS research increased, he found some common ground with health officials whom ACT UP had criticized.