(continued)

Unlike so many fellow dead actors, Chris Penn's death at 40 years old seems to have been brought on naturally by his obesity—as his younger brother Sean Penn has stated publicly—instead of by drugs. Penn's posthumously debuted films (The Darwin Awards, Holly) have not, unfortunately, made for particularly good eulogizing.

His small role as a Minnesota bumpkin in the critically panned Darwin Awards earned him little mention, and the New York Post's Kyle Smith gave Holly 1.5 out of four stars, saying that the movie "has been gathering dust for so long that one costar, Chris Penn, has been dead nearly two years."

The heavyset actor, best known for tough-guy roles in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and True Romance, does have one redeeming possibility left in the crime drama Aftermath—although the fact that the film has been in post-production purgatory for more than two years does not bode very well.