NEWYORK –
Charlbi Dean, a South African actor and model whose breakout role in “Triangle of Sadness,” this year’s top prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival, has died at the age of 32.
Dean passed away Monday at a New York hospital from a sudden, unexpected illness, her representative said on Tuesday.
Dean also had a recurring role as the assassin Syonide on the DC Comics television series “Black Lightning,” which aired on the CW from 2018 to 2021.
She was born Charlbi Dean Kriek in Cape Town, where she also grew up.
Dean began modeling as a child, appearing frequently on catwalks and magazine covers in the decades that followed.
She survived a near-fatal car crash in 2009.
She made her acting debut in the 2010 film “Spud”, adapted from a popular South African novel about an all-boys boarding school starring Troye Sivan and John Cleese. She reprized her role in the 2013 sequel.
In “Triangle of Sadness,” Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s first English-language film, Dean and Harris Dickinson play a pair of famous fashion models on a super yacht. The rich fell into chaos. It also stars Woody Harrelson as the ship’s captain.
The film won the Palme D’Or at Cannes in May and opened in the US and most of Europe in October.
At the festival before the film won, Dean told The Associated Press, “For me, I was like, I’ve won. I went to Cannes with the film. It was unbelievable. Anything goes. just a cherry at this point for me, you know?”
