Doctor Who actress Elisabeth Sladen dies

• In pictures: Elisabeth Sladen

Doctor Who star Elisabeth Sladen, who was also in spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, has died aged 63.

Sladen appeared as Doctor Who assistant Sarah Jane Smith in the BBC television sci-fi series between 1973 and 1976, opposite Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker.
The Liverpool-born actress appeared in four series from 2007 of The Sarah Jane Adventures on children's channel CBBC.
Sladen had been battling cancer for some time and leaves actor husband Brian Miller and daughter Sadie.
Theatre work A BBC spokesman said: "It is with much sadness that we can announce Elisabeth Sladen, the much-loved actress best known for her role as Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who and CBBC's The Sarah Jane Adventures, passed away this morning."
Doctor Who star David Tennant told BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat that he had been "bewitched" by the actress's performances in the show when he was a boy.

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Former Doctor Who actor David Tennant remembers Elisabeth Sladen

He added that he would "never forget" working with her when Sarah Jane Smith returned to the show during his tenure as the 10th Doctor.
"Having been such a huge part of my childhood, she was everything you hoped she would be when you met her. She was extraordinary," he said.
John Barrowman, who co-starred with Sladen when she returned to Doctor Who in 2006, paid tribute to the star via micro-blogging site Twitter.
"I loved my time on the Tardis with her. I am proud to have worked with such an icon of the sci-fi world," he wrote.
"Your Doctor Who family are very sad and will miss you and your beautiful smile. She was a delight. Can't tell you how sad I am."
Russell T Davies, creator of The Sarah Jane Adventures, said: "I absolutely loved Lis. She was funny and cheeky and clever and just simply wonderful. The universe was lucky to have Sarah Jane Smith, the world was lucky to have Lis."
Doctor Who executive producer Steven Moffat said she had been a "ferociously talented actress".
'''Never meet your heroes,' wise people say. They weren't thinking of Lis Sladen," he added.
"Sarah Jane Smith was everybody's hero when I was younger, and as brave and funny and brilliant as people only ever are in stories.
"But many years later when I met the real Sarah Jane - Lis Sladen herself - she was exactly as any child ever have wanted her to be. Kind and gentle and clever and a ferociously talented actress, of course, but in that perfectly English unassuming way."
Sladen began her career as an assistant stage manager at the Liverpool playhouse.
Her first role on stage was playing a corpse, and she made her screen debut in the 1965 film Ferry Cross the Mersey as an extra.

The actress originally starred in Doctor Who for three years in the 1970s. Here she is alongside Tom Baker

Her first role leading role was Desdemona in Othello, before the actress landed the role of a barmaid in Coronation Street for six episodes.
She has also appeared in several other hit TV shows, including Z-Cars, Public Eye, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em and Special Branch.
But it was her role in Doctor Who that gained her the most recognition.
Sladen first appeared as Sarah Jane alongside the third Doctor, Jon Pertwee, and stayed for three-and-a-half series, also working with Pertwee's successor, Tom Baker.
Her character, a journalist, was renowned for being inquisitive and stronger than some of the Doctor's other assistants.
After her time in the Tardis, Sladen returned to her native Liverpool where she worked in theatre.

She reprised her Doctor Who role on several occasions over the years and was given her own spin-off series on CBBC in 2007, in which she appeared with the most recent two Doctors, David Tennant and Matt Smith.
In 2006, ahead of rejoining Doctor Who, Sladen said of the show: "I think it has lovely layers and I'd defend the programme to anyone.
"I'm very emotionally part of that programme and I think a lot of the people who worked on it are. You used to love going to work every day."
'Brilliant presence' CBBC controller Damian Kavanagh said he was "deeply saddened and shocked by the news of Lis's untimely death".
"Lis brought joy, excitement and a sense of wonder to her many fans in her role as Sarah Jane Smith. She was adored by our young audience and I know all of them will miss her as much as I will," he said.
Keith Jones, the director of BBC Wales, which makes The Sarah Jane Adventures, said: "The Sarah Jane Adventures has been one of the most successful children's programmes on television in recent years - and without Elisabeth Sladen it would not have happened.
"A brilliant presence on screen and on set, she brought the excitement and energy of the Doctor Who family of programmes, of which we are very proud at BBC Wales, to a whole new generation. She will be missed by all at BBC Wales who worked with her."
Sladen's agent Roger Carey described her as a "dear friend".
He said: "She was so positive about life and her natural energy was intoxicating. She couldn't believe her luck when her career was resurrected in her own series."
Doctor Who returns on Saturday and a spokeswoman for the show said that "something suitable is being planned" as a tribute to the late actress

5 Curses You Probably Want to Stay Away From

1. The Madden Curse

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As a pro football player, not only are you making ridiculous amounts of money for playing, but you also have a chance at scoring some serious endorsement money. However, you might want to reconsider if offered a deal as the new face of the Madden video game, considering the track record of your predecessors:

2000-Barry Sanders, Detroit Lions—Sanders didn’t play a single down during the 1999-2000 season (or ever again), retiring after a ten year career.

2000-Dorsey Levens, Green Bay Packers—Later copies of the game to featured Levens, who was bothered by a bad knee in the following season, leading to reduction to a reserve player (aka benchwarmer). He was fired in 2001.

2001- Eddie George, Tennessee Titans—Blew a pass that led to the other team’s touchdown in the Divisional Playoffs. In the following season, his rushing average sank to an all time low, and incurred persistent injuries.

2002- Daunte Culpepper, Minnesota Vikings—Culpepper’s 2001 season was less than impressive, leading to a 4-7 record before Culpepper got a knee injury and was benched the last five games of the year.

2003- Marshall Faulk, St. Louis Rams—Incurred an injured ankle; Rams missed playoffs despite having been in 2/3 Super Bowls in the preceding three years.

2004- Michael Vick, Atlanta Falcons—fractured right fibula in a pre-season game

2005- Ray Lewis, Baltimore Ravens—In 2004, achieved no interceptions (for the only time in his NFL career), sat out final game with an injury. In 2005, torn right hamstring.

2006—Donovan McNabb, Philadelphia Eagles—Made a big show of not being afraid of the curse in a press release. In the first game of the year, suffered a sports hernia, which eventually led to a surgery that took him out for seven games.

2007- Shaun Alexander, Seattle Seahawks—Broke left foot, missed six games.

2008- Vince Young, Tennessee Titans—Hurt right quadriceps in fifth game of season. First time Young had ever sat out of a game because of an injury.

2. The Hope Diamond

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Allegedly (but unlikely) plucked from the eye of an Indian idol, this 45.52 carat gray-blue diamond seriously seems to mess with its owners. Although a lot of the hype surrounding the “cursed” diamond was made up by jewelers who wanted to sell it, it has been (very loosely) connected to many unfortunate events. Victims include Louis XIV, who died of gangrene and had all his legitimate children die in childhood, and French finance minister Nicolas Fouquet, thought by some to be the real Man in the Iron Mask. The beheading of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are often attributed to the diamond, as is the brutal murder of Marie Louis, Princess de Lamballe, who was hit with a hammer, decapitated, stripped, raped, and disemboweled before her head was carried on a pike to be displayed in front of Marie Antoinette’s prison cell. Sultan Abdul Hamid apparently gave the diamond to a mistress, whom he stabbed to death within a year. Wilhelm Fals, a jeweler who worked on the diamond, was killed by his son Hendrik, who stole the diamond and committed suicide. A Russian prince Kanitowski lent it to a French actress, Lorens Ladue, whom he later murdered before his own violent death by revolutionaries. Evalyn McLean bought the diamond, and consequently became addicted to morphine, mislaid her very considerable fortune, lost her son to a car crash and her daughter to a drug overdose, and was left by her husband who eventually died in an insane asylum. The diamond was finally donated, via US mail in a brown paper sack, to the Smithsonian. The mailman, James Todd, had his leg crushed in an accident, suffered head injuries in a later accident, and then had his house burned down.

3. Uluru Ayers Rock

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This large, sandstone formation in northern Australia is sacred to the Aboriginal tribes of Pitjautjatjara and Yankinytjatjara. Legends abound on how this rock came into formation, including having been made by two boys playing in mud after a rainstorm, snake beings waging war and carving formations into rocks, and a place where the earth cropped up in grief after a war. It is a beautiful place, and thus a huge draw to Australian tourists, who enjoy hiking up it (for whatever reason). Apparently not content with a mug or a t-shirt, these tourists began stealing their own personalized souvenirs from the rocks. Then, in 2008, reports began circulating of an influx of returned rocks in the mail. The park claims to receive, on average, one package a day containing rocks (one was over 70 pounds), with approximately a quarter of these reporting bad luck associated with the rock. Complaints include family illnesses, death, stomach problems , car accidents, and miscarriages; as one British tourist stated, “Things were good in my life before I took some of the Ayers Rock home with me, but since then my wife has had a stroke, and things have worked out terrible with my children. We’ve had nothing but bad luck.” All such letters are collected by the park in their “Sorry Book” as a warning to future victims of the rock.

4; King Tuts Curse

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The ancient Egyptians really took what happened to their dead bodies seriously, as shown by the elaborate attempts to preserve their dead bodies, and the big huge triangular things sitting in the middle of the Sahara desert. Not satisfied with lasting thousands of years, the pharaohs painstakingly assured that no one would mess with their tombs for long by instilling curses on them (i.e. “Cursed be those who disturb the rest of a Pharaoh. They that shall break the seal of this tomb shall meet death by a disease that no doctor can diagnose”—yikes). The opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922 supposedly unleashed one such curse on the archaeologists working on the dig.

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James Henry Breasted reported that after the first opening, he returned home to find a cobra (symbol of Egyptian royalty) in his birdcage, eating his canary. On April 5, 1923, Lord Carnarvon, a member of the expedition, died from blood poisoning and infection due to a mosquito bite knicked with a razor. On May 6, 1922, George J. Gould died of a mysterious fever. Sir Bruce Ingram, given a paperweight of a mummified hand wearing a bracelet with a curse printed on it, reported his house burning down after receipt of the gift. In May 1926, the leader of the expedition, Howard Carter, reported his first sighting of the same type of jackals as Anubis, god of the dead, in his 35 year exploration of Egypt.

5. Tecumseh's Curse

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William Henry Harrison (and America) was kind of a jerk when it came to dealing with Native Americans. At the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, his troops killed the powerful, charismatic Native American leader, Tecumseh. This seemingly innocuous (yeah, it sucks, but it happened for like, a hundred years before that) happening led to one of the creepiest curses in American history, leading to a death sentence for any president inaugurated in a year ending with a zero:

1840—William Henry Harrison is elected on the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!” as a war hero. He died after serving only one month as the president from a cold.

1860—Abraham Lincoln survived the five year long Civil War, only to be shot by Lee Harvey Oswald five days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered, on April 14, 1865.

1880—James Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled job applicant on July 2, 1881, and died September 19, 1881.

1900—William McKinley was elected for his second term in 1900, and was shot by Leon F. Czolgosz on September 6, 1901.

1920—Warren G. Harding, after a scandal filled presidency, died on August 2, 1923 of a stroke, while on his “Voyage of Understanding”.

1940—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, elected for his third presidential term in 18940, died April 12, 1945 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

1960—John F. Kennedy, the youngest man to ever be elected president, was gunned down on November 22, 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald (or whatever).

1980—Ronald Reagan, the oldest man and first movie star to ever be elected, survived an attempted assassination on March 30, 1981. He is considered to have broken Tecumseh’s curse—but over 100 years is not so bad, as far as really dependable curses go.

Author: Alexandra Wayson Copyrighted © paranormalhaze.com