When you hear the expression “there never will be another like him/her,” which movie star, musician or sports star comes to mind for you?

Freddie Mercury.

David Bowie, Roger Federer, Bobby Orr and Jack Nicholson.

Ichiro.

Genesis P-Orridge

Which movie star, musician or sports star...? Really? Just those three categories or is that all that whoever wrote this question thought were important? At the risk of earning an OFF-TOPIC, I would like nominate as a personal 'irreplaceable Human', Linus Pauling. Of course, for music there are too many to pick just one and as unique as each is, still, there will never be another Beethoven, another Schubert, another Mahler, and a long list of others including, perhaps, Kitajima Saburo, Elvis, The Beetles, Freddie Mercury, et alia for recent luminaries, all unique. Movies again too many to single out albeit Mifune Toshiro, Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, et alia. Sports has always been opaque to me but I'm sure there have been unique personages there as well. But, the person I think of first according to the criterion "When you hear the expression “there never will be another like him/her,”" is, as mentioned, Linus Pauling. Much of what we have today came from his work and our world would be a noticeably different and less rich world were he not to have been. Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia which is more concise and inclusive and terse than I would be able to manage with my compulsive loquaciousness:

Linus Carl Pauling FRS (/ˈpɔːlɪŋ/; February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994)[4] was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics.[5] New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time,[6] and as of 2000, he was rated the 16th most important scientist in history.[7] For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He is one of four people to have won more than one Nobel Prize (the others being Marie Curie, John Bardeen and Frederick Sanger).[8] Of these, he is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes,[9] and one of two people to be awarded Nobel Prizes in different fields, the other being Marie Curie.[8]

Life would be very dull if that were true. GOAT's are made every day. New ones come along.

Noël Coward.

George Carlin.

Maria Callas.

John Coltrane.

Bill Evans.

Beatrix Potter.

Vincent van Gogh.

Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Coco Chanel.

Tom Waits.

In truth I believe every one of us has a quality that makes us unique.

But there are some who inspire me greatly...

I’d much more like to honor all unknown and normal people like you and me. Of course it’s easy to name all those ‘stars’, but it’s having become obvious now that they also -when all of them summed up- have lead our planet and societies very near to the edge, into these disastrous states everything is in nowadays.

@Sven Asai: Lol.

Musicians, movie stars and sports stars are 10 a penny these days. The circuses part of bread and circuses going strong.

Barry Manilow

W.C. Grace

My Cat, Stunt. RIP passed away 2 years ago but his memories will stay with me for ever.

Sinatra.

Elvis.

My Dad.

Paustovsky

Genesis P-Orridge

Oh yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRcgQ_e3w4g

Freddie Mercury

Neil Peart

Eddie Van Halen

Prince

John Lennon

George Harrison

Tom Petty

Paustovsky

Genesis P-Orridge

Oh yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRcgQ_e3w4g

it may possible I’m missing something but holly smokes Batman, that’s bad!

@ bass4funk

Freddie Mercury

Neil Peart

Eddie Van Halen

Prince

John Lennon

George Harrison

Tom Petty

Wonderful list. Prince not so much

So I’d like to add

Billy Joel

Charlton Heston

Charles Bronson

Ian Anderson

Bob Probert ice hockey

Peter Gabriel

others have mentioned Elvis, Sinatra, but Scott Joplin and Johann Strauss II will always be my top picks as well.

Wow!! How can we talk about Neil Peart without mentioning Geddy Lee or Alex Lifeson? Impossible. Neil would never have been great without Alex and Geddy.

RUSH !

Wow!! How can we talk about Neil Peart without mentioning Geddy Lee or Alex Lifeson? Impossible. Neil would never have been great without Alex and Geddy.

RUSH !

That is why I mentioned Peart, without him, there is no rush, and vice versa without the other two.  As for Prince, when it came to funk, there was no other. It was between him and Quincy Jones.

No one can beat my choice:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

As for Prince, when it came to funk,

serous question, cuz all I know is 1999 and purple rain, and I don’t know much about it, but I’d put Rick James for funk over Prince .

but I’d put Rick James for funk over Prince .

Despite the fact that James despised Prince with a passion, I agree with you 100%

Despite the fact that James despised Prince with a passion

Curious as to why

But I’m no pro on this. I don’t even like Jazz.