John Cazale + Laydu
A film documentary and tribute about Cazale, titled I Knew It Was You, was an entry at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and featured interviews with Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman, Richard Dreyfuss, Francis Ford Coppola, and Sidney Lumet.
John Cazele Aug 12, 1935
In his final film, The Deer Hunter, he chose to continue acting despite being diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, and died in New York City on March 12, 1978, shortly after completing his role. He was 42.
Cazale was characterized as “an amazing intellect, an extraordinary person and a fine, dedicated artist” by Joseph Papp.During his six-year film career he appeared in five films, each of which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter.
John 
Meryl Streep
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Claude Laydu French actor Known for the Bresson role dies at 84.
Mr. Laydu fasted to achieve the thinness required for the role. “Claude Laydu as the tortured young priest gives such a sense of general suffering that he is literally painful to watch,” Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times.
Mr. Laydu, unlike many of the untrained actors whom Bresson used, continued acting after appearing in “Diary of a Country Priest.”
Update: Nicole Ladmiral who was great in the Diaray of a Country Priest, died at 28 by throwing herself deliberately beneath a subway train in the Paris Metro. (1958)