James Ransone, who performed Chester “Ziggy” Sabotka in 12 episodes of the second season of “The Wire,” died Friday. He was 46.
The actor’s demise was confirmed by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner, which listed the reason for demise as a suicide.
Ransone’s profession additionally included 20 years of horror and thriller movies comparable to “Sinister” (2012) and “It: Chapter Two” (2019). In a 2019 interview with The Lumberjack, he described himself as an “under-the-radar character actor” and added, ” I’m only a scrappy punk rocker who ended up on this bizarre, massive cultural phenomenon.”
Ransone additionally named the HBO miniseries “Technology Kill” as his favourite venture as much as that point.
“I lived in Africa for nearly a yr capturing that — eight or 9 months — and that was so superior for quite a few causes,” he defined. “I received to spend so much of time with vets who had simply come dwelling from the Iraq Struggle, and my household has an extended historical past of that. We’ve plenty of veterans within the household. It was only a actually massive, nice, enjoyable journey that additionally means so much, personally.”
Ransone, who grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, dropped out of movie college when he was 19 and labored as a photographer all through his twenties. In an interview with Interview Journal he revealed attending an arts college as an alternative of a standard public highschool “saved” him.
He additional elaborated on his relationship with performing and famous: “I get much more catharsis from taking photos or portray or making quick movies. You will have some management. I feel all artwork—if it’s good—is a results of actually attempting to create one thing you could’t put into phrases.”
The expertise of capturing “Technology Kill” was a “spotlight of my life,” he additionally stated. “Residing in Africa, being across the dudes who have been being written about—since my dad is a Vietnam vet. Being round these marines who had fought in warfare and so they have been younger, I received to see some model of my dad as a younger man. A whole lot of issues began to make sense to me another way. I turned actually shut with Evan Wright—the man who wrote the ebook [the series was based on]—and I turned actually shut with a number of the marines nonetheless to at the present time.”
In 2021 Ransone revealed he was a sufferer of rape and sexual assault as a baby. Ransone posted a letter on Instagram that he despatched to his alleged abuser, Timothy Rualo, who labored at Sudbrook Magnet Center Faculty on the time the letter was written. Ransone additionally notified the police of the accusation, however was instructed they weren’t considering pursuing it.
James Ransone was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He’s survived by his spouse, Jamie McPhee, and their two kids.
