Ray Stevenson, the Irish actor who played the villainous British governor on “RRR,” a warrior in the “Thor” movies and a member of the 13th Legion on HBO’s “Rome,” has died. He was 58 years old.
Stevenson’s representatives told The Associated Press that he died on Sunday but had no further details to share Monday.
Stevenson was born in Lisburn in 1964. After attending the Bristol Old Vic Theater School and years of working in British television, he made his feature film debut in Paul Greengrass’s 1998 film “The Theory of Flight.”
In 2004, he appeared in Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” as a Knight of the Round Table and several years later played the title role in the earlier Disney Marvel adaptation “Punisher: War Zone.”
Although “Punisher” wasn’t the best-reviewed movie, he gave Marvel another try in the first three “Thor” movies, in which he played Volstagg.
Other notable film roles included the “Divergent” trilogy, “GI Joe: Retaliation” and “The Transporter: Refueled.”
With a strong presence at 6-foot-4, Stevenson once said in an interview, “I guess I’m an old warrior at heart.”
On the small screen, he was the roguish Titus Pullo in “Roma,” a role that really launched his career in the United States and landed him a SAG card, at the age of 44. The popular series ran from 2005 to 2007.
“That was one of the most important years of my life,” Stevenson said in an interview. “It made me sit in my own skin and say, just do the job. The work is enough.”
In Variety’s review of “Rome,” Brian Lowery wrote that “the towering Stevenson certainly stands out as a brawling, prostitute, and not-too-bright warrior, a force of nature who, despite his excesses, somehow keeps landing on your feet.”
Ray Stevenson in his role in “Thor”.
He was Blackbeard in the Starz series “Black Sails”, Commander Jack Swinburne in the German TV series “Das Boot” and Othere in “Vikings”.
Stevenson also did voice work in “Star Wars Rebels” and “The Clone Wars” as Gar Saxon, and has a role in the upcoming live-action Star Wars series “Ahsoka,” in which he plays a bad guy. , Baylan Skoll. The eight-episode season is expected on Disney+ in August.
In an interview with Backstage in 2020, Stevenson said that his acting idols were “The likes of Lee Marvin (and) Gene Hackman.”
“Never a bad performance, and brave and fearless within that caliber,” Stevenson said. “He was never the hot young lead; They were men I could identify with.”
Stevenson has three children with Italian anthropologist Elisabetta Caraccia, whom he met while working on “Roma.”