Actress and model Charlbi Dean dies at 32

Charlbi Dean, the South African actor and model who had a breakout role in Cannes prize winner Triangle Of Sadness, has died at the age of 32.

She died on Monday at a hospital in New York from a sudden unexpected illness, her representatives said.

Dean also had a recurring role as the assassin Syonide in the DC Comics television series Black Lightning, which aired from 2018 to 2021.

She was born Charlbi Dean Kriek in Cape Town, where she was also raised.

Dean began modelling as a child, making frequent appearances on fashion runways and magazine covers in the decades that followed.

She survived a near-fatal car accident in 2009.

She made her acting debut in the 2010 film Spud, an adaptation of a popular South African novel about a boys’ boarding school starring Troye Sivan and John Cleese.

She reprised her role in a 2013 sequel.

In Triangle Of Sadness, the first English-language film from Swedish Force Majeure director Ruben Ostlund, Dean and Harris Dickinson play a celebrity fashion model couple on a cruise for the ultra-rich that descends into chaos.

The film won the Palme D’Or at Cannes in May and opens in the US and most of Europe in October.

At the festival before the film won the award, Dean told the Associated Press: “For me, I’m like, I’ve already won. I’m already at Cannes with the movie. That’s so unbelievable. Anything is just a cherry on top at this point for me, you know?”