Michael Clarke Duncan, the hulking, prolific character actor whose dozens of films included an Oscar-nominated performance as a death row inmate in The Green Mile and other box office hits such as Armageddon, Planet of the Apes and Kung Fu Panda, is dead at age 54.
Clarke died Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was being treated for a heart attack, said his fiancée, Rev. Omarosa Manigault, in a statement.
The muscular, 6-foot-4 Duncan, a former bodyguard who turned to acting in his 30s, "suffered a myocardial infarction on July 13 and never fully recovered," the statement said.
He owed some of his good fortune to Bruce Willis, who recommended Duncan for The Green Mile after the two appeared together in Armageddon.
Born in Chicago in 1957, Duncan was raised by a single mother whose resistance to his playing football led to his deciding he wanted to become an actor.
