Cory Monteith

Cory Monteith was the hunky star of the TV show Glee who died suddenly at age 31 in July of 2013. Cory Monteith was raised in Victoria, British Columbia and dropped out of school in the ninth grade, working odd jobs and playing drums in a rock band before setting his sights on becoming an actor. Tall, dark-haired and boyishly handsome, he made his first TV guest appearance on the TV show Stargate: Atlantis in 2004. Over the next five years had small parts on TV (including a recurring role in the series Kyle XY in 2006-07) and in films like Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006) and White Noise 2: The Light (2007). In 2009, he landed a role in a new TV show, Glee, and the funny, campy musical dramedy became an improbable hit. Monteith played Finn Hudson, the school's star quarterback who finds happiness with a group of talented musical misfits in a high school glee club. He spent four years on the show, singing and dancing to pop songs and show tunes in the fictional William McKinley High School of Lima, Ohio. Monteith did not appear in the last few episodes of the fourth season, and in March of 2013 he checked himself into rehab for an unnamed substance addiction. He was released a month later, but on July 13, 2013, he was found dead in his room at the luxury Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. Vancouver police said they believed that Monteith was alone when he died, and that there was no indication of foul play. The final coroner's report cited "combined heroin and alcohol toxicity" as Cory Monteith's cause of death.