James Ransone, star of The Wire and Sinister, dies at 46

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s office ruled Ransone’s Friday death a suicide.

James Ransone, the prolific character actor who made unforgettable, often haunting turns in series like The Wire and films like Sinister and The Black Phone, has died at the age of 46.

Ransone died on Friday, according to a case report by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s office, which ruled the actor’s death as a suicide by hanging.

When reached for comment by Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Police Department declined to comment, citing policy forbidding comment on cases of suicide.

Ransone was born on June 2, 1979 in Baltimore. After a brief stint at New York’s School of Visual Arts, Ransone made his breakthrough in Larry Clark’s controversial erotic drama Ken Park, which released in 2002.

The following year, he secured one of the roles that would come to define his screen presence, and larger legacy as an actor. Ransone played the impudent and impulsive dock worker Chester “Ziggy” Sobotka on season 2 of The Wire. His brash and at times shocking actions made for one of the most nail-biting arcs across the series run, and marked the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration with series creator David Simon.

Ransone humorously recalled his first impression of the character in 2015, saying he remembered the “dialogue was really, really dense. I was living in New York, but I’m from Baltimore. I grew up in Towson, in the suburbs, so when they auditioned me — it was one of the first scenes in the bar, where Ziggy takes his dick out — and the dialogue was so f—ing dense. I was like, ‘I have no f—ing idea what’s going on with this, but I know I can do a Baltimore accent.'”

After The Wire, Ransone found purchase with some of the most acclaimed American directors of their respective generations, from John Waters (A Dirty Shame) to Spike Lee (Inside Man) to Sean Baker (Starlet). He would reteam with Lee for 2013’s remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, and with Baker for his 2015 breakout Tangerine.

Ransone also appeared in the main cast of several series, like Simon’s Wire-esque New Orleans-set drama Treme, and Bosch, on which he played the crooked cop Eddie Arceneaux. Reflecting on his time on Simon’s Generation Kill, a gritty look at the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Ransone highlighted his personal connection to the material, “since my dad is a Vietnam vet.”

“Being around these Marines who had fought in war and they were young, I got to see some version of my dad as a young man. A lot of things started to make sense to me in a different way,” he told Interview Magazine in 2016. “It made me make sense of my upbringing, my own family. My dad was a Green Beret and he got shot in Vietnam. He had to come home. It really affected him and it still affects him to this day.”

Over the course of the last decade, Ransone carved out a genre specialty in horror, appearing in films like Prom Night and Sinister, and most recently earned a resurgence with roles in new classics like It Chapter Two and The Black Phone.

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