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World-renowned Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucia has died aged 66 in Mexico, reportedly of a heart attack while playing with his children on a beach.

Australian actress Wendy Hughes has died at the age of 61.

The Melbourne-born star of My Brilliant Career and longtime actor in the ABC drama State Coroner is understood to have died of cancer in Sydney early on Saturday morning.

Actor Bryan Brown announced the death to the audience of Sydney Theatre Company's Travelling North on Saturday afternoon, inviting theatregoers to honour the late actress with a standing ovation.

Working across TV, film and the stage, Hughes was one of Australia's best recognised actresses, sensationally appearing in The Graduate in Sydney in 2001 and in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 2007. Most recently, Hughes played Mrs Higgins in the Sydney Theatre Company's 2012 production of Pygmalion.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/act ... z2vLdd8f00

Mickey Rooney dead at 93

Actor Mickey Rooney, who became Hollywood's biggest movie star while still a brash teenager in the 1930s and later a versatile character actor, has died aged 93.

Rooney, who was one of the biggest box office stars of the studio era, had been ill for some time.

Born Joe Yule Junior in New York in 1920, he first appeared on the stage at 17 months and went on to spend almost his entire life in show business, appearing alongside some of Hollywood's biggest stars.

He teamed up with Judy Garland in the 1939 movie musical Babes in Arms and starred with Elizabeth Taylor in the 1944 classic National Velvet, which launched Taylor's career.

However, Rooney was best known for his role as wholesome teenager Andy Hardy, a character he portrayed in 16 movies.

He was nominated for Academy Awards throughout his career and after 60 years on the silver screen he was recognised with an honorary Academy Award statue in 1983.

His most recent film appearance was in The Muppets in 2011.

Rooney was married eight times, the first time to screen beauty Ava Gardner.

In 1978 he found a lasting marriage with country singer Jan Chamberlin. In his late 80s they toured the country with a song-and-dance act.

Asked once if he would marry all his eight wives again, he said: "Absolutely. I loved every one of them."

He is survived by his wife Jan, whom he separated from in 2012, and eight children.

Rooney was an entertainer almost from the day he was born appearing in a miniature tuxedo as a toddler in his parents' vaudeville act.

As he grew older, Rooney added dancing and joke-telling to his stage repertoire before landing his first film role - a cigar-smoking little person in the silent short Not to Be Trusted.

After his parents split, Rooney and his mother moved to California where she steered him into a movie career.

His mother changed his name to Mickey Rooney when he began getting roles.

The first Andy Hardy film, A Family Affair in 1937, became a surprise hit and led to a series of 16, with Rooney's character becoming the main focus and helping make him the biggest box-office attraction of 1939 and 1940.

In 1938, Rooney received miniature Academy Awards for juveniles.

"Call him cocky and brash but he has the sort of exuberant talent that keeps your eyes on the screen," the New York Times said of Rooney in a 1940 review.

It was in Love Finds Andy Hardy that he first worked with Garland, who was on the verge of superstardom herself with The Wizard of Oz.

They made two more Hardy movies together and in 1939 were cast together in Babes in Arms, a Busby Berkeley musical about two struggling young entertainers that earned Rooney, then 19, an Academy Award nomination.

"We weren't just a team, we were magic," Rooney said in a stage show about his life.

Rooney proved he could handle serious roles, too, with a notable performance in 1938 in Boys Town as a troubled kid helped out by a kindly priest played by Spencer Tracy.

He picked up another Oscar nomination for The Human Comedy in 1943.

His fame, money, gambling, lust and mercurial nature were problems for the MGM studio, which did not like seeing its young star sully his reputation and box-office potential.

The studio assigned a full-time staffer to keep Rooney out of trouble but his antics still frequently ended up in gossip columns and MGM was greatly upset when in 1942 Rooney, 21, married Ava Gardner, then a 19-year-old aspiring actress.

The marriage lasted barely a year but the controversy which surrounded it failed to dent his success at the box office and from 1939 to 1941 Rooney had ranked as the top US male box-office attraction.

After he returned from serving the military as an entertainer during World War II, the public was growing weary of seeing him play teenagers.

"I was a 14-year-old boy for 30 years," he once said.

After the rush of stardom, Rooney was battered by a stalled career, drug and gambling addictions, bad marriages, a failed production company and the deep financial problems they caused. He lost his hair and grew paunchy as he aged but he persevered.

"I'm a ham who wants to be a small part of anything," he told the Times.

He took small parts, worked in lesser movies and tried a couple of television shows. He picked up two more Oscar nominations for 1956's The Bold and the Brave and The Black Stallion in 1979.

In 1979 he also broke through on Broadway, harkening back to his vaudeville beginnings with Sugar Babies, a burlesque-style revue with MGM tap dancer Ann Miller in which he sang, danced and dressed in drag.

He said the role saved him from being "a famous has-been".

"The American public is my family," Rooney said. "I've had fun with them all my life."

Rooney won an Emmy and a Golden Globe in 1982 for the TV movie Bill, playing a mentally handicapped man trying to live on his own.

The Ultimate Warrior, the WWE wrestling legend who was born James Brian Hellwig (and who, in 1993, legally changed his name to Warrior), passed away Tuesday at the age of 54.

While, sadly, the early death of a professional wrestler is all too common, this one is particularly shocking because he's appeared on WWE programming in the US three times in the previous three days.

WWE.com confirmed his passing and added, "We are grateful that just days ago, Warrior had the opportunity to take his rightful place in the WWE Hall of Fame and was also able to appear at WrestleMania 30 and Monday Night Raw to address his legions of fans. WWE sends its sincere condolences to Warrior's family, friends, and fans."

Former NSW premier Neville Wran dies aged 87

Former New South Wales premier Neville Wran has died. He was 87.

A statement from his family said he died shortly before 6:00pm (AEST).

Wran, who led the Labor government in NSW from May 1976 to July 1986, had been suffering from dementia and was under special care for the past two years.

"This is of course a very sad time for us all, but in fact a blessed release for Neville," his wife Jill Hickson said in a statement.

"Dementia is a cruel fate and I have been grieving the loss that comes with it for some years.

"But I hope now, especially in this political climate, people will join me in celebrating the life of a great man, a true political hero."

The so-called Wranslides of the late 1970s and early 1980s delivered Wran a record run in New South Wales politics.

Wran was a boy from working-class Balmain who forged a lucrative career as a barrister, earning the nickname Nifty.

He was 43 when he took a seat in the Upper House of Parliament in 1970, before entering the Lower House as the member for Bass Hill three years later.

In 1976 Wran led the ALP to a cliffhanger win before two years later recording the biggest victory in New South Wales election history.

He then thumped the Coalition again in 1981.

Wran shocked his supporters when he resigned in 1986, never having lost an election, or even a by-election, in his 13 years as leader.

Prizefighter Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter dies at 76

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter never surrendered hope of regaining his freedom, not even after he was convicted of a triple murder, then convicted again and abandoned by many prominent supporters.

The middleweight title contender, whose murder convictions became an international symbol of racial injustice and inspired a Bob Dylan song and a Hollywood film, died Sunday after a long battle with prostate cancer. He was 76.

For 19 long years, the prizefighter was locked in a prison cell far away from the spotlight and the adulation of the boxing ring. But when he at last won his biggest fight — for exoneration — he betrayed little bitterness. Instead, Carter dedicated much of his remaining life to helping other prisoners and exposing other injustices.

Carter "didn't have any bitterness or anger — he kind of got above it all. That was his great strength," said Thom Kidrin, who became friends with Carter after visiting him several times in prison.

The boxer, a former petty criminal, became an undersized 160-pound contender and earned his nickname largely on his ferocity and punching power.

Although never a world champion, Carter went 27-12-1 with 19 knockouts, memorably stopping two-division champ Emile Griffith in the first round in 1963. He also fought for a middleweight title in 1964, losing a unanimous decision to Joey Giardello.

But his boxing career came to an abrupt end when he was imprisoned for three 1966 murders committed at a tavern in Paterson, New Jersey. He was convicted in 1967 and again in 1976 before being freed in 1985, when his convictions were thrown out after years of appeals. He then became a prominent public advocate for the wrongfully convicted.

His ordeal and its racial overtones were publicized in Dylan's 1975 song "Hurricane," several books and a 1999 film starring Denzel Washington, who received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal.

Actor Bob Hoskins dies aged 71

British actor Bob Hoskins, best known for his performance in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, has died after a bout of pneumonia at the age of 71, his family said on Wednesday.

The gruff Londoner, who rose to fame in British gangster films in the 1980s and went on to have a long career as a Hollywood character actor, died in hospital on Tuesday night, the family said in a statement.

Hoskins, who was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe for his role in Mona Lisa in 1986, retired from acting in 2012 after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

"We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Bob," said a statement from his wife Linda and the couple's two children Rosa and Jack, and Hoskins's two children from his first marriage, Alex and Sarah.

"Bob died peacefully at hospital last night surrounded by family, following a bout of pneumonia," said the statement.

"We ask that you respect our privacy during this time and thank you for your messages of love and support."

Hoskins left school at the age of 15 and claimed he only got his break in acting by accident, after being mistakenly called for a theatre audition.

He began as a television actor and broke through into film with his portrayal of a doomed London gangster in The Long Good Friday in 1980, which won him a BAFTA nomination.

One of his best known roles was as the detective trying to work out who framed Roger Rabbit, the eponymous cartoon hero, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1989.

More recent success came with a Globe nomination for Mrs Henderson Presents with Dame Judi Dench, while his last role was one of the seven dwarves in the film Snow White and the Huntsman.