Roland Joffe‘s The Killing Fields (’84) is, of course, a respected, harrowing, award-winning drama about the real-life horrors experienced by N.Y. Times reporter Sydney Schanberg and Cambodian photographer and interpreter Dith Pran. To me here were always four stars of that film — Sam Waterston (who played Schanberg), Schanberg, Dith and the Cambodian actor who played him, Haing S. Ngor, and won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his efforts. With today’s announcement of Schanberg’s death at age 82, only one of the original four is still with us — Waterston. Ngor, whom I interviewed for Us magazine in the fall of ’84, was killed by Los Angeles gang-bangers during a robbery assault in 1996. And Dith died of pancreatic cancer in ’08.
